


With Honey

by SofiaBane



Series: Eight Days a Week [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Diapers, Didactic!Voldemort, Diplomacy, Don't worry he's still really mediocre in a lot of ways, Good Harry, Harry and Ginny are both so bi, Horcrux harry, Including the sexy kind, M/M, Mentorship, No character bashing, Not reasonable or correct mostly just sane, Omorashi, Political, Politics, Powerful Harry, Sane Voldemort, Slow Burn, Sorry not sorry for the kink but there's also an entire story here, Wandless Magic, nappies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 20:36:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 68,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8175197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofiaBane/pseuds/SofiaBane
Summary: A sequel to Eight Days a Week. While the wizarding world war grinds on, Harry firmly believes that diplomacy starts in the home. Voldemort’s home, specifically. It will take their powers and politics combined to save the world, anyway. That is, if anyone even believes that they’ve forged an alliance.A story of negotiation, trust, and truth. One part character development; one part political philosophy; one part shameless fetish.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [Eight Days a Week](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7799647). Unlike its predecessor, this is a fic with an entire plot, not just kink. You might be alright starting here if you want; it shouldn't be too disorienting.
> 
> This fic explores omorashi and nappies kinks; additionally there's scenes of bondage, spanking, humiliation, breathplay, and sexy Legilimency. These kinks inform character development more than plot; if they're not your thing, you can scroll past the sex scenes and still find a fully-formed plot.
> 
> Beyond that, this fic showcases my fetishes for politics, moral ambiguity, mentorship, didacticism, wit, confrontation, and characters having Conversations about their Feelings.
> 
> Content warning that chapters 1 and 5 includes some non-explicit discussion of coercive sex. Chapter 3 contains drunk sex.
> 
> This is un-beta'ed and un-Britpicked. It diverges from canonical details around/after HBP. The chapter breaks weren't in the original, but have been added for ease of access, so they mean nothing artistically. The British Muggle politics presented within aren't particularly accurate or historical. (The PM mentioned is not Blair.) Allusions and inspirations are in the endnotes. Thanks for reading.

Harry enjoyed exactly twenty-four hours of peace in Voldemort’s home before the shit hit the fan.

Even his awakening had been an unsettling forewarning: downstairs he had heard the slam of the front door and then Snape’s voice in a low but angry tone. Voldemort’s voice matched his, and Harry wished it didn’t. At least if they had been shouting, it would’ve defused some of the tension. And he could have actually heard what they were saying. Instead he got ready, as heavy footsteps and the banging of potions instruments and the low argument brewing downstairs created a palpably tense atmosphere.

Harry delayed his descent until after Snape had left. When he did, Voldemort was packing potions instruments and scarcely looked up. “You heard that?”

“No, I didn’t,” Harry said. “That’s why I came down.”

Voldemort gestured to the morning’s _Prophet_ on a nearby side table. “You’re wanted.”

Harry unfolded the paper before him. So he was. The front page headline read, _Compromised loyalties? Potter spotted with the Dark Lord._ Underneath was a photo of the street on Diagon Alley, as the pipe burst by Voldemort’s memory spell still sprayed water across the cobblestones, splattering onlookers.

The speculation ran rampant. Imperio, of course; a Polyjuiced version of Harry to undermine morale; a Polyjuiced version of Voldemort, who _knows_ why (he hasn’t even got hair, Harry thought with bewilderment). One analyst speculated that Harry had martyred himself when he followed Voldemort’s Apparation; another suggested that their _auras_ had clashed so strongly that it wasn’t Apparation they’d witnessed at all but contact disintegration. Ew. Most of the quotes and speculation came from Ministry employees or magical theorists, but the _Prophet_ had apparently also attempted tracking down his friends. His stomach lurched when he saw Ginny’s name:

_“No comment,” snapped Ginevra Weasley, Potter’s girlfriend of a year. “You all are vultures. You want me to say he’s dead or evil or something full of pathos so your tiny imaginations can run with it. Harry’s resourceful and brave, and this article is ridiculous, it’s a mockery of journalism. I don’t know and you certainly don’t either. So no comment. – Bloody hell, stop writing!”_

_If Weasley is right and Potter is as capable as she believes, surely he was with the Dark Lord of his own accord. If he was not – the Dark Lord has a sixteen year grudge for repayment. Aurors continue to interview witnesses and analyze magical fingerprints on the scene. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Ministry – whether for Potter’s sake or the sake of the Wizarding world._

“Your girlfriend is right, it is a subpar piece of journalism.” Voldemort was briskly frothing his potion, which had taken on a thick pearl sheen.

“But what do I _do_?” Harry sighed. “Going to the Ministry would get me imprisoned. Or killed.”

Voldemort only snorted. “Perhaps. But the Ministry is far less organized than it’s been, with Scrimgeour gone.”

The knot in Harry’s stomach tightened. “I want to see him.”

“Why, to negotiate diplomatic relations? No.” Voldemort set down his whisk, reducing the potion’s heat. “Even if you do still make headlines, you’re not central to this conflict. Besides, we’re going to the Middle East tonight.”

It was such an obvious misdirection, like sweets to an upset child, but Harry took it anyway. “What? Why?”

“To see a Parselmouth Bedouin community with whom I have trade relations. They may interest you, actually; they live autonomously but the state government has full knowledge of their existence. Including their magic.”

“Which is what you want.”

“What is what the entire Wizarding world should want,” Voldemort corrected with some asperity. “The potion will be portable by evening; we’ll leave then.”

 

Harry spent most of the day packing – or rather, trying to help Voldemort pack, who clearly didn’t trust him with instruments, books, or taking any sort of direction. But inwardly he composed and recomposed letters to his friends: _I’m alive and okay. I’ve chosen to stay with Voldemort for now because…._ That’s as far as he could get. That dangling _because_ rattled inside him all day.

By evening, Voldemort’s potion had solidified, forming a perfect pearl at the bottom of the cauldron. He simply picked it up with tweezers, dropping it in a stoppered vial. “It will be injected under the next new moon in two weeks,” he said, not that Harry had asked. “Take the bags. We’re traveling by Portkey.”

Harry slung four bags – lightened by magic, but still too bulky – over his shoulder. Voldemort had another few in one hand and a silver pocket watch in the other. “It will open in a minute,” he said. “The destination is northern Jordan – they have one official location for all international travel by magic. From there we’ll take transit south.”

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to _do_ there.”

Voldemort shrugged. “Practice being the diplomat you aspire to be. At the very least, it will keep you out of Britain and away from its prosecution.”

So he would be a fugitive then. Brilliant. When the hands of the pocket watch swept upon eight o’clock, Voldemort held it out, and Harry touched it.

The bags, alarmingly, weighed him down enough that he worried he simply wouldn’t make it to their destination. at least not intact. But the Portkey dropped him into an outdoor plaza, roughly but in one piece. Tucking the watch away, Voldemort relieved Harry of a bag. “Follow me.”

He approached a man lingering beside a ramshackle bus. “We need you to take us to the Hajaya.”

The man’s face split into a grin. “If you can find them.”

“I spoke to Wadha yesterday. They’re expecting us.” Voldemort’s tone held the edge of a threat.

The conversation had sounded slightly odd to Harry – after a minute, he realized it was because of a faint sibilant undertone. He’d have to brush up on his Parseltongue.

“And you’re with him?” the man asked Harry, reaching for his bags to load onto the bus.

“Um, yeah.”

“What business you got with the Hajaya?”

“Our own,” Voldemort interrupted. “Come along, Harry.” He prodded him onto the bus, following.

Their driver shrugged as he settled into his seat. “It’ll be a rough ride, and a good two, three hours. Depending how many lions’re out tonight.”

He apparently was serious. Harry slid into a seat across the aisle from Voldemort, and the bus lurched into motion.

They came across a few towns, but much of the journey was through desert, pitch black and isolated. Harry watched the scenery outside (no lions yet) and suppressed questions about what would happen should the vehicle break down in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t know any lion-repellant spells. Perhaps Voldemort did.

But Voldemort was scratching out lists and calculations of something on scrap paper, completely disregarding everything around him. Fine. Harry slumped back in his seat, and then realized how badly he needed to piss.

If only he’d had parents who had instilled in him the value of going before he left the house. But it was his own fault, as the evening had just been harried and he hadn’t been thinking. Plus, it was strange to not have a nappy on; he had to be extra-diligent to not forget that and let go into his jeans. The bumpy ride didn’t help, nor did the uncertain length of time left.

He resolved to disregard it, at least for now. “Voldemort?” He half-looked up. “Can I have a quill and parchment?” He slung the bag to Harry. “Thanks.”

So here was Attempt #100 at putting his motives into words:

_Dear Ginny,_

_I miss you all. I’m safe and I’m with Voldemort. We’re working on things together – he’s traded your safety for my cooperation, and I thought that was best for everyone. I promise it will turn out okay. Keep everyone safe and I’ll be home soon._

Upon rereading it: trite, like every other letter he’d mentally composed today. The most insincere part, though, was the final word; really, he had no idea when he’d be home. Or if. Or what home even meant anymore.

The bus then lurched horribly, causing Harry’s bladder to slosh in a panic-inducing way. Outside, he could just make out in the darkness the road they had been on; the driver was now apparently pulling off to four-wheel the bus through the desert. The jolting ride really didn’t bode well.

He edged out of his seat, approaching the front of the bus. “Sorry, could we pull over?”

The driver shook his head. “We’d stall in the sand. An’ who knows what’s out at this time of night.”

“Then… how much longer?”

He shrugged. “Hour? Two?” He glanced over at Harry. “Yer not going to be sick in my bus.”

“No, I won’t. Thanks.” Defeated, he returned. But then the bus hit another bump, and not only did Harry stumble, but he had to shove one hand between his legs. The tiniest spurt escaped him, creating a wet spot the size of a marble on the front of his jeans. _Fuck._

Voldemort had apparently witnessed the exchange, and far better understood Harry’s predicament. He cast a discreet sound barrier as Harry returned. “Could you wait?” Then a glance at the wet spot, and a wry smile, as he pressed a mocking fingertip to it. “Ah.”

Harry’s insides twisted, and he pushed Voldemort’s hand away, glancing at the driver to check that he wasn’t witnessing this. “Um.”

“The nappy bag is in the back,” Voldemort continued, gesturing to the rear of the bus where the driver had loaded their luggage. “With an Oblivion spell on the driver, you’d even have some measure of privacy.” He swung his legs into the aisle. “Do you know Oblivion?”

Harry shook his head. Then the bus shuddered over a bump, jostling his bladder horribly once again. “Could you cast it, please.” Hurriedly, he made his way ungracefully to the rear of the bus. He couldn’t stifle his groan as he had to bend over to pick up the bag, his shorts growing wetter. Voldemort, meanwhile, cast a dark blue spell over the driver, who went unnervingly slack.

“Is he going to crash?” Harry asked as he handed the bag over, one hand already fumbling at his fly.

“Into what?” Voldemort asked, gesturing out the window at the featureless desert. “No, his full attention is on driving. Hold this up.” He pushed a corner of the nappy into Harry’s hand. With Harry still standing, they collaborated quickly to get him into the nappy and plastic pants. They were scarcely secured when he gasped, thrusting a hand between his legs as a long spurt of piss escaped him.

“ _Shh_ ,” Voldemort chided, slapping a hand over his mouth and pulling him seated in a single motion. He kept his hand over Harry’s mouth to stifle any other sounds, and kicked Harry’s legs apart. “Go, before the spell wears off.”

It didn’t matter, control was beyond him at this point anyway. He slumped backwards as piss bubbled into the nappy, hot and ticklish and such a relief that he nearly sobbed into Voldemort’s palm. The nappy swelled between his legs, fogging the plastic pants with heat, and the thick stream was audible to them both. The wetness crept around his legs, up his belly, nearly to his back, and he couldn’t stop himself.

At least, couldn’t stop himself until he began getting hard, the head of his cock pressed against the soft, soaked fabric, and the vibration of the bus providing _just_ the right friction, and Voldemort’s unapologetic gaze making him feel so deliciously humiliated. He shook Voldemort off, fumbling for his jeans before he tented the fucking nappy.

God, what was wrong with him. A week with Voldemort had revealed him to be both poorly toilet-trained and a bloody fetishist. And revealed Voldemort to be amazingly receptive to said fetishes. Like now: stopping him from pulling on his jeans, Voldemort dropped a hand into his lap, long fingers teasing his hard-on. “Harry, _really_.”

“Don’t.” In front of them he could see the aura of the spell wearing off, and he really needed to be bloody _dressed_ when it did. Besides, the realization of sex magic this past week had left him… conflicted, to say the least. Confrontations were not his thing, but – he squared off in the seat to face Voldemort. “You used sex magic in that potion.”

Voldemort looked mildly surprised at that, and it was enough of a distraction that Harry had a moment to hurriedly pull his jeans over the soaked nappy. “What do you know of sex magic?” Voldemort asked. “Nothing they taught you at Hogwarts, certainly.”

“I know enough to _recognize_ it.”

Voldemort shrugged. “It strengthens magic exponentially. And an opportunity for it so seldom presents itself.” His face twitched into something resembling a wry smile. “I don’t typically suffer seventeen year olds. Or their libidos.”

But before Harry could respond, their driver cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. The spell was wearing off, and as Harry didn’t particularly want an audience for this conversation, he fell quiet, returning to his seat across the aisle. Stroking off wouldn’t even feel good right now, he convinced himself, and with some reluctance he vanished the nappy.

Finally, the driver pulled up to a spot that looked identical to everything else they had passed in the past two hours. “This is as far as I go. They’ll be camped that way.” He gestured out the door.

Harry rose to collect their bags as Voldemort counted out coins. “Thanks. ‘Night.” He slung bags over his shoulder – including the nappy bag. _Bugger_. He didn’t even know whether to let this go on. For now, he simply took it with the rest and exited onto the warm desert sand.

Voldemort approached him from behind. “There’s bonfire smoke straight ahead. Go.”

There was a faint haze in the distance, scarcely perceptible by starlight. Regardless, Harry didn’t move. As the bus rumbled off, he spun to face Voldemort. “You _tricked_ me into your bloody sex magic.”

“Tricked you? When?” Voldemort prodded him forward. “ _Go_ , straight ahead. You’re able to walk and attempt a confrontation simultaneously.”

Harry did, reluctantly, and still half-turned to Voldemort. “Fine, you _manipulated_ me. Do we really have to argue about bloody words, since you know what I mean.”

Voldemort’s gaze was impatient. “No. Perhaps I took advantage of the circumstances presented,” he said. “And if I _must_ put up with the urges of a teenager, at least the potion would benefit.”

The walk, the long day, and the weight of the bags slapping repeatedly against his torso took the mood from aggravating to unbearable. If Harry were younger, he would’ve definitely had a temper tantrum upon the sand. “Here,” he said, thrusting a few bags toward Voldemort. “Bloody carry something.”

Voldemort took the proffered bags, surprisingly, without remark. “Harry, _you_ introduced the… element of sexuality to begin with. _You_ were getting off on being chained in a nappy anyway.”

The bluntness of the comment curdled Harry’s stomach, but he persevered: “I’ve seen the sex toys and rubbers you’ve kept in the nappy bag. You can’t say this wasn’t planned.”

Voldemort snorted. “I _promise_ , I could not have possibly anticipated your fetishes.” He raised an eyebrow. “Of course, you can chuck the nappy bag, if you’re so upset. I only thought you’d be grateful to have it along.”

He hated the way Voldemort backed him into corners like this. He shook his head minutely, and they trudged ahead.

But the night became much more eventful very quickly: a few hundred yards ahead, a full-grown lioness stepped into their path. “Oh bloody hell,” Harry breathed, drawing closer to Voldemort unconsciously.

“Where’s your wand?” Voldemort asked, not taking his gaze off the lioness.

Harry had to shift the bags, carefully, to draw it. “Now what?”

Voldemort tossed his wand into the sand at the lioness’s paws. “Yours too.”

Harry really ought not trust Voldemort at all, and certainly not enough to throw down his wand when faced with a lion. “Are you _mad_?” he hissed (why he felt compelled to whisper, he couldn’t say). “What’s the quickest spell to get it to go?”

“She’ll escort us to camp. But she needs your wand.” Voldemort sounded calm, but Harry was still unnerved by how stock-still and careful he was acting. He let his wand fall beside Voldemort’s.

Taking both wands carefully in her mouth, the lioness turned. They followed.

The lights and smoke of campfires were visible, but the scene of the settlement itself seemed to shimmer before Harry; his eyes couldn’t quite focus or differentiate shapes until they crossed some invisible threshold. Then, before him, were a few fires with rocks and branches gathered around as seating, tents in the background, and communal space with tables and crafts set up. A few adults milled around the fires, but nobody acknowledged them with more than a glance.

The lioness led them through the encampment, to a large tent made of gauzy lavender material. The silhouettes inside seemed small – children? – and only a few seemed to pause upon hearing them approach.

The lioness sat primly at the tent’s entrance, still watching them. And she wasn’t relinquishing their wands yet, apparently. Following Voldemort’s lead, Harry dropped his bags at the entrance. He had nearly pulled back the tent’s flap when Voldemort grabbed his shoulder. “Wait.”

“ _What_.” Still peevish with Voldemort and physical contact, he ducked out from under his grip.

Voldemort instinctively reached for his wand and made a frustrated noise when it obviously wasn’t on his person. Instead he plucked a few reeds from nearby, running two fingers down them to transform them into a long silver chain. This he slung around Harry’s neck, fastening it with a lock to make an impromptu leash and collar.

It had happened so quickly that Harry could only react after the fact. “Bloody hell, you’re not about to lead me around like a sodding _dog_.” He yanked at the collar, but it was solid enough that he’d only accomplish choking himself.

Voldemort shook his head. “It’s not a sex slave accessory. Regardless of what you might suspect,” he added with a wry glance. “You want insights into the wizarding world’s politics, here’s one. You’re quite wanted right now, which makes you an unknown factor and volatile as a subject – acting on your own behalf, do you understand? But as an _object_ – say, a POW – you’re both more valuable alive than dead, and also a good deal less threatening.”

“I’m _not_ a POW.”

“I know it, you know it. The rest of the world doesn’t need to know. But if you don’t acquiesce to this… strategic charade, Harry, they’ll be casting lots for whomever gets to _own_ you.”

Harry rolled his eyes, unimpressed. “Don’t make out to be my savior.”

Voldemort ignored his indignation. “We really must speak to Wadha before we retire tonight. Should I give you a silencing spell as well, or will you contain yourself?”

Wanker. “I don’t need a charm.” Harry watched with no small amount of resentment as Voldemort attached the chain to his own belt loop. “And I _don’t_ want to be chained to you.”

“Of course you don’t. Come along and stay quiet.” Voldemort ducked into the tent and Harry, although bloody _mortified_ by the collar, followed.

It was in fact a tent swarming with children – not exactly where Harry expected any diplomatic relations to take place, but Voldemort was indifferent. He picked his way through chattering, scurrying children, toward a less chaotic backroom. Through the doorway Harry could see a woman, facing away from them, with long silver locs down her back.

“Wadha,” Voldemort said, coming up behind her. “Good evening.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him, while her hands remained busy with something before her, but Harry’s line of sight didn’t allow him to see what exactly. “Good evening.” Again, the sibilant undertone of Parseltongue. “What crisis have you gotten yourself into now?”

“No crisis.” Voldemort took something she offered to him, then passed it on to Harry – a basket of warm flatbread, studded with pomegranate seeds and orange zest.

“Take those to the children,” she said over her shoulder. It was only then that she turned around properly and looked Harry over. “No crisis?” she asked Voldemort, raising an eyebrow.

“Not at all. We just need to be out of Britain for awhile.”

“Mm.” She looked at Harry directly for the first time. “In that case, _you_ go give those to the children, before they go cold.”

Voldemort graciously unfastened _his_ end of the chain, leaving Harry with a good five feet of links dangling from his throat. The chain was heavier than expected, and he shot Voldemort a horrible look as he wrapped a length of it around his free hand.

When he brought the basket out to the kids, they fell on it hungrily and paid him no mind at all. At least. And when he returned to the kitchen, he had the distinct sense that his absence had been just long enough for Voldemort and Wadha to have exchanged a few critical words. She took the basket from him, refilling it with more steaming flatbread. “And for you. Welcome to Abdiah.”

“Thank you.”

Voldemort scooped up the end of the chain, re-attaching it to his belt loop, to Harry’s irritation. And Wadha took note of it as well for the first time. “I don’t like it,” she said to Voldemort. “It’s so… literal. Lacks subtlety.”

“I haven’t got the patience for subtlety. As you know.” His remark got a flicker of a smile from Wadha, before they turned to go. “Goodnight.”

“’Night,” Harry echoed.

Once outside, they were able to collect their wands – apparently the lioness had deemed them trustworthy enough. Also their bags, which Harry kept getting tangled in the fucking chain. “Goddammit,” he finally snapped and, wedging his wand between the chain and his throat, simply broke it. It returned to its form as a reed as it fluttered to the ground harmlessly.

“Mm, no.” But when Voldemort raised his wand, Harry brandished his own.

“Just, don’t.” Surprisingly, Voldemort dropped the matter.

They crossed out of the most civilian-heavy area and into dark desert, where the light of the fires barely reached. “Here,” Voldemort said, punctuating it by dropping a bag into the sand. “Set up camp.” As an afterthought: “You can seethe while doing so, if you’d like.”

Having packed that bag earlier, he knew it contained a tent, but he didn’t move to get it. “I don’t need to be _chained_ to you, because you don’t bloody _own_ me,” he addressed Voldemort. “And don’t act as though you’re doing me any favors by making me out to be a slave.”

“POW,” Voldemort corrected. “Governments don’t care about slaves.” To Harry’s mild surprise, he dropped to his knees to begin unpacking himself. “If you actually maneuvered yourself into the situation in which you think you want to be, as an autonomous political figure, you’ll regret it. Your naïveté, for one – hold this.” He passed a tent pole to Harry. “Your overestimation of your own political significance, for another. And these.” Two more poles in Harry’s hands. “Furthermore, if people believed you’re here of your own accord, you will have to justify your course of action. Not just to your girlfriend – ”

“Don’t even talk about her,” Harry spat.

“ – but, in the future, potentially to the Wizengamot. You have an _alibi_ when or if you ever figure out why you’re here.” He took the poles from Harry, inserting them into the frame of the tent, and with a wave of his wand, the structure snapped together. “Here,” he said, handing a smaller bag to Harry. “Now would you unpack.”

It was the lack of _fight_ that made it the most galling, Harry thought; for Voldemort to respond to his rebukes in the same tone as he offered directions. Like he wasn’t worth even getting fussed about. “Just don’t act like you’re my bloody savior,” he reiterated.

Voldemort raised his eyebrows and gave a short nod – patronizing, probably, but Harry was just done. He took the bag, storming into the tent. Voldemort apparently had plans of his own and didn’t follow.

The bag was full of miniaturized furniture which, after dumping it onto the floor, Harry set to restoring to normal size. He could’ve put it all in place first and _then_ enlarged it, true, but the physical satisfaction of shoving furniture around burned off a lot of his angry energy.

By the time Voldemort returned, Harry had finished unpacking and was sitting at the kitchen table eating pita bread. “I have something you’d like,” Voldemort said as he entered.

“What?”

He handed him what looked like a rolled newspaper. “I commissioned it from Ede months ago. She’s only just finished it.”

When Harry opened the ‘newspaper,’ a shot of the Ministry of Magic panned cinematically before settling on the front entrance. Dynamic boxes captioned people, physical location, and recent news pieces. (In this case, Harry was offered the article ‘Acting Minister says Wizarding world on the brink of ‘civil war.’’ Brilliant.)

“It’s called a Panopticon,” Voldemort continued as he settled into a chair with pita. “It’s an impressive piece of magic. Move it around a bit.”

Voldemort dragged his finger across the page to demonstrate and the map shifted focus to continental Europe; a depression allowed it to zoom in. Turkey: ‘Ministry admits to memory-wiping Muggle government ‘daily,’ obscuring strife.’ Harry slid the view to China: ‘Magically-altered crops suspected as chemical warfare.’ Shuddering, he handed it back to Voldemort.

“I thought you’d be interested,” Voldemort said, with some genuine feeling. “It’s better than looking through the papers.”

“It is. I’ll look at it later.” Harry chewed as he tried to formulate what he actually wanted to say. “You said that _this_ , the war and everything, was bigger than us. So, what is it? What causes it all, and how could it all even happen for one reason?”

Voldemort acknowledged his question with a nod but didn’t immediately answer. Harry waited in silence stubbornly. “You should find that out,” he said after a time, “from other people. I’d have a difficult time convincing you that this is bigger than my participation, if my perspective is all you hear.” He nodded to the Panopticon’s screen. “Go learn the motives of those chemical terrorists – _genuinely_. Then go to their Ministry and convey it more nicely than by poisoning. At some point you may talk to someone who knows why everything is happening. Or at least tells you as much.”

“So what, nobody actually controls this?”

Voldemort waved off the question. “Don’t ask me. Ask Wadha, for one.” As though to put an abrupt end to the conversation, he swept crumbs into his palm, turning from Harry as he rose to throw them out. His motion was just a bit too deliberate.

Harry wasn’t done being feisty. “Oh, so I’m allowed to talk to Wadha now?”

In response, Voldemort threw two spells over his shoulder. The first, a weak stinging hex that hit Harry in the clavicle, as a warning shot. The second, much worse, fastened another chain collar around his neck. “You may,” Voldemort said evenly, “and you’ll be spanked for impertinence, as you clearly need.”

This took Harry aback – he got the distinct impression he was supposed to protest, but he didn’t know whether it should be done sincerely or in the mode of their strange, mocking half-play. Silence hung between them long enough that Voldemort snapped, “I didn’t ask if you _wanted_ to be spanked, I said you _would_ be. Up.”

He stood, still keeping the table between them like a shield. “You don’t get to talk to me like that.”

“Fine.” Voldemort grabbed Harry’s collar, dragging him toward the bedroom. “We’ll do this in silence then.” With his spare hand, he shot a silencing spell at Harry.

Goddamn, but Voldemort was inscrutable. Harry reached for his wand – either to break the silencing charm or the collar, both would be brilliant. But when Voldemort hurled him toward a low bed, he had to throw his hands out to keep from being impaled on the nearest bedpost. This was new: up to this point, Voldemort had been nothing if not _deliberate_ about his violence. Voldemort conjured a single loop around the headboard, stringing a glowing chain between it and Harry’s collar, and it bloody _reeled him in_.

He struggled, finding himself dragged headfirst along the bed, and when he had the wits to, he grabbed his wand to throw an explosive curse at the chains. The headboard was singed, but nothing more. _Dammit_. Secondly, he cast Finite against the silencing charm. “What the hell is wrong with you,” he demanded of Voldemort, who was somewhere behind him. Since he was now fully sprawled along the bed, with his collar three chain links from the headboard, he was obliged to rest his forehead on it, staring into the wood.

“Keep your voice down,” Voldemort said calmly. “The tent isn’t soundproofed – “

“I don’t care,” Harry snapped. “Let me up.”

“You don’t want that.” Voldemort leaned over him to take his wand. “Right?”

“ _No_.” It was a ruddy mood-killer to speak so forcefully while staring at the headboard. “What are you _doing_.”

“You really don’t know?” Voldemort sounded surprised (which in turn surprised Harry). “I only thought I’d return things to… normal.”

The unexpected absurdity of this answer caused Harry to let out a sharp laugh, defusing some of the tension. “Normal, yeah.” He got to his knees and tried glancing back at Voldemort, without success. “And it’s not sex magic?”

“No.” He heard Voldemort’s footsteps retreat, and a zipper. “I have no need for sex magic at the moment. What I _do_ need, however – as do you – is the appearance of a POW relationship. Or maybe,” he added, “you would prefer the term captive. Or slave.”

And like that, all of Harry’s goodwill vanished again instantly. “I told you, I’m not going along with your bloody charade.”

“You haven’t got a choice. So I suppose it’s not much of a charade. Lift your hips.” Voldemort was back at his side, and slid a hand underneath him to undo his belt buckle.

Harry, against his better judgment, allowed him to tug his trousers to his knees, as he formulated a response to that. Voldemort more-or-less undressed him by pushing his robe up to his shoulders, and his pants and jeans to his ankles. The cool air to which Harry’s legs and arse were exposed was itself an embarrassment, though he was only distracted by it for a moment before Voldemort hoisted his ankles to situate Harry across his lap for a spanking. “Until you get the idea,” he said briefly, before landing a sharp smack across Harry’s arse.

It was only then that Harry became incredibly self-conscious that the tent wasn’t soundproofed, as the spanking must have been audible and obvious to everyone in earshot. He reached for his wand on the nightstand. “Wait.”

“ _Wait_?” Voldemort repeated. His methodical spanking did stop, for a moment. When Harry threw up sound barriers at the edges of the room, he snorted, plucking the wand out of Harry’s hand again. “That wasn’t an oversight, _dear_.” He undid the spells and Harry felt a knot in the pit of his stomach.

“This is perverse.”

“It is, isn’t it.” Voldemort landed another smack, number six, that stung and humiliated him as it reverberated in the crisp air. “When you can’t look anyone in the face tomorrow, perhaps you’ll understand.” Three more smacks in quick succession, punctuating the otherwise-stillness of the surroundings. Then Voldemort, very peculiarly but off-handedly, offered: “Say when.”

Well. Voldemort’s spanking became measured – ten, eleven, twelve. And this _was_ perverse, from being put in charge of his own spanking to the delightful contrast of cool air on his legs with the stinging heat of his arse. He squeezed his eyes shut, briefly reveling in feeling so deviant.

But when he did, just having his tactile senses to appreciate, he became strangely aware of Voldemort’s presence as well – the warmth and surprising softness underneath him, with something like a gentle current of magic between them. To say nothing of Voldemort’s general acquiescence to Harry’s fetishes. It was this tension, this complicated arousal that Harry had been getting off on. He only held the thought in his mind briefly (and later would wonder in mortification if Voldemort, via Legilimency, had _known_ ). And when the spankings just seemed too intimate and far too revealing, he choked out, “Enough.”

Voldemort stopped, pushing Harry’s lower half off his lap. Harry still didn’t open his eyes because he, in his revelation, just couldn’t look at Voldemort. Then his ankles were hoisted and another nappy slid beneath him. “Forgive my presumption,” Voldemort said, and Harry shifted his weight to facilitate the plastic pants slid up his legs. Voldemort loosened the chain just a few links, enough for Harry to lower himself onto the bed properly. “Goodnight.”

“Thanks. ‘Night.” He still didn’t look, but apparently after Voldemort left, he soundproofed the rest of the tent. And then Harry was left alone with his thoughts and the sting of the spanking on his arse.

He wasn’t going to rationalize. He could, but wouldn’t. He _was_ going to wank. He slipped a hand between his legs to stroke a hard-on he had tried to delay since the spanking had begun.

 

The next morning, he awoke to a _very_ interesting conversation taking place outside. A man’s voice Harry didn’t recognize: “I want to see him.”

And Voldemort: “There’s nothing to see. He wouldn’t know who you were anyway.”

“So I’ll tell him. Of course. Really, nothing can happen without him – or without dealing with him, anyway. And I don’t only mean for _us_ , but for your strategy as well.”

“As far as you know,” Voldemort said loftily. “I can keep him right where he is. And I don’t want you giving him ideas to the contrary.”

Harry grabbed his wand, to work furiously on the chain, and collar, and any other way to let himself up. Voldemort must have led the man away from the tent; they sounded fainter. “You always have been selfish,” the stranger said. Something like a laugh from Voldemort. “But now myopic as well?”

Wedging his wand between the collar and his throat, he strained at the magical metal. Nothing, of course. But he experimentally tried Engorgio – which amazingly _did_ work, and as soon as its diameter was wide enough, he simply slipped the collar over his head. He was halfway finished fastening his robes before the weight of the nappy between his legs registered in his consciousness. “Hells.” He hurriedly took it off, performed some quick cleaning spells, and made a hasty decision to go commando as he left to catch up with Voldemort and the stranger.

They were ten yards from the tent; Voldemort was watching as the other man drew some diagram in the dirt. Voldemort’s countenance remained neutral upon seeing Harry, but he did deftly perform a silent spell that once again wrapped a collar around Harry’s neck. Bugger. “Devin,” he said as Harry approached, “this is Harry. Harry, Devin. We’ll continue indoors.”

“How lovely to offer.” Devin had dark curly hair and a tan, but his strong Irish accent betrayed his origins. He scuffed out whatever figure he’d been demonstrating in the dirt – Harry recognized it as some sort of rune, at least – and stood. “Good to meet you, Harry.”

“You too.”

Voldemort had returned to the tent, and Harry scampered to follow. Devin hadn’t been who he was expecting, insofar as he had any expectations. Voldemort held open the tent flap behind him, and when Harry passed, he said in an undertone, “What did you do?”

“What?” Harry opened his eyes wide and innocent.

Voldemort shot him a look. “Put on the kettle.”

So he hovered in the kitchen as Devin and Voldemort took a seat in the living area. Devin, by way of inclusion, glanced over the dividing island counter at Harry: “Wadha says you got in late last night.”

“You’ve already had a chance to talk to her?”

Devin shrugged. “She doesn’t seem to sleep. And I was up late on a conference Floo to Cork. Thank you,” he said, as Harry brought out a tea tray. Voldemort didn’t exactly invite him to join, but didn’t disallow it either, and he pulled up an ottoman.

“And what did Cork have to say?” Voldemort asked.

“Well, they agree that Scrimgeour can’t remain as he is. He’s too influential. Or, at least, he could be.”

“Of course he is,” Voldemort said impatiently. “That’s the exact point of neutralizing him. Really, what are they thinking.”

“They think that such a central figure would benefit from Imperio, and they’re wondering why you hadn’t considered the same.”

Voldemort grimaced. “I can handle the governance of Britain without him, or anyone else. It’s the Muggle government that may need… coaxing.”

Harry felt like a prat when he realized that the conversation he had overheard earlier was _not_ about himself after all. Of course. “Wait, why would Ireland care about Scrimgeour?”

They both looked at him like he was stupid. “Because it’s politics?” Devin suggested. “Actually,” he continued (after a glance at Voldemort to affirm that he was _allowed to talk to Harry_ , sod it all), “that’s not fair, you deserve better. Irish magical communities have wanted to secure autonomy from the Muggle government for ages – like the sort that Wadha’s established here. Scrimgeour’s not our Minister, but we’re still bound up by a few international treaties, and he’s forbidden our autonomy up to now. Says he’ll cut off aid if we try anything. Good thing I ran into Voldemort when I did, though; he controls more of Britain’s politics than anyone right now.” (Flattery, yes, but Voldemort brightened and preened a bit at it anyway.) “Anyway, these battles – they seem just shy of a world war by now, really – have created enough turmoil that we think we can leverage ourselves by.”

Harry took a second to process this. “And that’s what you want too, right?” he asked, turning to Voldemort.

“Approximately,” Voldemort agreed. “Though the success of neither country is predicated upon the other; we’re only working in parallel.” His demeanor had a touch of caution or reservation about it, like he couldn’t decide whether to engage Harry in this.

“You could do it together, though, couldn’t you? And you’d be that much stronger when facing the Muggle government.”

“Oh, fantastic. Not only are you going to bring peace to wizarding Britain, you’re also going to re-unite us with Ireland. Brilliant.”

He was so ambivalent about Voldemort’s rousing sarcastic bouts. “You haven’t got to be an arsehole.”

“You don’t know how naïve you sound. Just be quiet and you may _listen_.”

Harry would’ve clenched his fists if he weren’t holding a teacup. Instead he pressed his lips together tightly and hated Voldemort.

Devin looked thoughtful, however. “The possibility has been raised before, of course. We had agreed that the fragility of our Muggle government would put us all in a precarious position, wasting time and resources. Besides,” he said wryly, “we are brilliant at civil warfare.”

Voldemort ducked his head in a tiny demonstration of amusement. “On the other hand, as I told you, that fragility itself is an opportunity. It’s foolish to expect different treatment from the same government. Topple it, and you can start over to your advantage.”

“If you’re going to exert that much control over the government _anyway_ , there’s not actually any difference from Imperio.”

As this all was happening, Harry was watching Devin discreetly. He got the sense that Devin wasn’t much older than Harry himself. Yet, of course, he also seemed _much_ older, in terms of both knowledge and credibility. And Harry recognized a feeling like jealousy within himself, in the way that Voldemort engaged him. He could have input and significance in world events too, dammit.

“So you want a puppet government,” he said to more or less both of them.

Devin’s “No” overlapped with Voldemort’s “Exactly.” Voldemort snorted. “You could at least be honest about it.”

But Harry hadn’t finished; before they got into it again he asked, “What if you put wizards in the Muggle government?”

This did make them both consider him in a satisfying way. Even though some part of him wondered what he was actually advocating, engaging in plans to overthrow the government more or less. But Devin chewed his lower lip. “Interesting. Has it – ?” He looked to Voldemort.

“During the First War, yes,” Voldemort answered. “Not successfully. Which isn’t to say it’s not a plausible strategy.” He gave Harry a short nod at that.

“Thank you.”

Voldemort’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re welcome.” He returned to Devin. Infuriating.

Harry gathered their teacups, moving to get up. But Voldemort caught his eye: “Wait.” He addressed Devin: “You’ll want to contact Presley McGill, he’s likely the only one of yours still alive who was involved. Harry and I will study entry points for England.”

“And then?”

“Then do what needs to be done,” Voldemort said elliptically. “Be in touch if you must.”

“Right. Thank you.” He grabbed his satchel. “This was helpful. And Harry, good meeting you.”

“You too, cheers.”

Voldemort let Devin see himself out; but when they were alone together, Harry didn’t quite know what to say while he did the washing up. It was Voldemort who re-engaged: “Get the figs and come here.”

Harry ran a towel over the last teacup. “Figs?”

“The bowl on the counter. Please.”

Bringing the bowl out, he sat on a squishy ottoman across from Voldemort. “What’re you doing?”

Voldemort was leaning over the Panopticon with a frown. “What I said I would. Since today is Sunday, we wouldn’t be able to see much movement in Parliament, of course, but at least there’s the infrastructure.” He was flipping back and forth through map overlays on the screen.

“Who did it last time?” Harry bit into a fig.

“Did what?”

“Which side infiltrated the Muggle government?”

Voldemort looked up, amused. “ _Which side_ ,” he mocked. “The evil yet stylishly ambitious one, of course. Ireland was a major player, you could gather. There was some collusion with India, it didn’t go well. I had one wizard in the cabinet until he was executed for treason.”

“Wait, _what_?”

“They didn’t know what he was doing, but they knew they didn’t want him doing it. Awful cover-up, naturally.”

God, he was in over his head. “And this… should have led to independence?”

“Perhaps. It certainly put us in a stronger position than we’re in currently.” Voldemort glanced up from the Panopticon. “And Devin didn’t need to hear this, but I do want you involved.”

So the half-snubs and disregard had been measured. Brilliant. “But you couldn’t have actually involved me.”

This got a brief look of surprise from Voldemort. He reached across the coffee table to give Harry’s collar a tug; Harry slapped his hand away. “Autonomy, far too dangerous right now. Better to keep your involvement subtle.”

“And what if I don’t want to be involved in your plot?” Harry asked, annoyed.

“But you do,” Voldemort said loftily. “Which _has_ come as a surprise, I admit, since nobody in wizarding Britain benefits from the status quo so much as you do.”

He was fairly sure that was an insult, but didn’t care to deal with it. Instead, he reached for the Panopticon. “I just want this to stop. The fighting,” he amended. “And your elaborate schemes will only prolong it.”

“You seem confident.”

“They _will_ ,” Harry said, scrolling through the Panopticon. “Because nothing you’ve done has ever been peaceful.” Then, at the sight on the screen, his stomach dropped. “Hogwarts is gone.”

Voldemort spat a mouthful of fig into his hand before he choked. “No, it isn’t.”

“It _is_.” He shoved the Panopticon back toward Voldemort and got up. “I’m going back, I don’t care.”

“Wait.” Voldemort was quickly skimming the Panopticon’s screens. “It might only be shielded, you don’t know.”

“It wasn’t before, though. Something’s _happened_.” He sounded a bit hysterical, but didn’t have time to care.

“But what good does it do to charge in now? You don’t know what _is_ still there.”

Taking out his wand, Harry summoned all the goodwill he had remaining within himself. He held the tip to his lips: “What happened?” And he conjured his Patronus to carry away his message.

But Voldemort froze his Patronus in place before it could bound off. “Who’s receiving that?”

“Snape. He must know something.” Because as much as Harry hated to call on Snape, there was no one else in such a precarious position as himself. Voldemort released the Patronus.

Within a few minutes, Snape’s reply arrived, in the form of a doe. “The Dark Lord should meet us in Knockturn Alley. Potter, stay where you are.”

“ _Bullshit_ ,” Harry exploded. “I’m coming with you.”

“You’re not. You may take the Panopticon, however, to remain updated.”

“You can’t just decide to let me in on your bloody world domination plans and then _exclude_ me from everything,” Harry accused him.

He expected Voldemort to raise his voice to match Harry’s tone, but instead he only sighed. “I know you’d rather see Hogwarts, but Harry, I don’t know what I’m walking into.” There was an unexpected vulnerability in the way Voldemort’s voice dropped with the last few words. It made Harry feel horrible.

“Sorry,” he choked out. Voldemort didn’t acknowledge it as he gathered a few necessities around the tent. So Harry stood in awful silence.

Finally – “I know this is very hard for you, but be good.” And that was as much of a goodbye as Voldemort cared to offer, because he left quickly.

And then… what? He sent off rapid Patronuses to Ginny, Ron, and Hermione, all asking what had happened. But none of them were likely to make it: they were too weak from not enough collective goodwill, they had too far to go, and they probably (hopefully) encountered strong barriers keeping Harry’s friends safe. He would let himself believe that was the reason that he didn’t hear back from anybody, at least.

He ate another fig, paced a lot, occasionally glanced at the Panopticon. He didn’t dare go out, in case he missed any news or Voldemort needed him suddenly. The weight in the pit of his stomach kept him pinned to the couch, anyway.

He was skimming newspapers on the Panopticon, looking for familiar names, when there was a sharp and ironic knock on one of the poles holding up the front of the tent. Devin let himself in before Harry could move. “’Morning, sorry, but I’m in a bit of a rush. Where’s Voldemort?”

“Out,” Harry said, unsure what more he could reveal. “Why?”

Devin hesitated. “I’ve got something for him.”

The resulting pause and vagueness threw Harry. “Okay? Can’t you leave it?”

Devin drew a fabric pouch out of his pocket, fiddling with it a bit. “I don’t… I apologize,” he said with a self-conscious laugh. “You’d really think I’d be better at dealing with political prisoners.”

Oh, God. “Here.” Harry held out his hand. “He’ll get it. Shall I have him sign for it?”

Devin missed the sarcasm of his statement completely. “Please. He can reach me by owl after three.” He handed over the bag.

Inside was unmistakably a watch. Not even a pocket watch, but a heavy metal wristwatch. Without asking if it was safe or anything – that would’ve been reasonable – he opened the bag. Ordinary, cool metal, numbered Muggle watch face, ticking the seconds at the right intervals. A watch.

He looked up at Devin. “That’s it?”

Devin cocked his head. “You can’t…? Then I guess yeah, that’s it.”

Now his curiosity was just overwhelmed, tease. “What’s it do?”

But Devin only smiled. “It’s only a timepiece, apparently. Tell Voldemort I dropped in.”

Harry drew his wand – clearly a surprise to Devin. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll tell him.”

“Voldemort lets you keep your wand?”

“He doesn’t _let_ me,” Harry said with some measure of impatience. “I just do.”

This, he only realized afterward, could have made two impressions. One, much closer to the truth, that Harry was so little of a threat that Voldemort let him keep his wand. Or two, as Devin seemed to surmise, that he had enough power to assert his will even as Voldemort’s prisoner.

“Of course,” Devin said. “I’ve got to be going, let him know.” Harry let him out.

And then he had something to which to devote himself. He went through some basic identifying and revelation spells: nothing. It wasn’t impervious to magic either: heating, cooling, enlargement, invisibility all worked on it. He wasn’t brave enough to attempt transmutation on it, in case it actually affected something permanently. But by all accounts, a watch.

He was brainstorming more advanced and concealed magic, and had actually opened one of Voldemort’s reference books, when a startlingly loud crackle came from the Panopticon. Harry jumped up, grabbing it off the countertop.

“Does this work?” Voldemort’s voice sounded low, like he was undercover. The screen showed a foggy mid-morning field.

“Yes?” Harry felt stupid, speaking into the empty space above the screen.

Voldemort apparently heard him. “This was Hogwarts,” he narrated, pausing for the effect of the finality. “Or about a hundred yards away from the edge of the grounds, rather. I’ve looked for enchantments, wards, anything that still demarcates the boundary…. There’s nothing.”

From the bottom of the screen – the Panopticon’s vantage point must be the tip of Voldemort’s wand – a spell shot into the distance, a white one that moved in a spiral. “You don’t know that one, I assume. Burrowing spell, also useful for boring into seals and wards,” Voldemort explained. “I’ll teach you sometime.” His calmness was forced and actually unnerving. They both watched it spiral and then fade in the distance. “If it had hit anything, there would have been a pop. But spells exhaust themselves after a time if they don’t find a target.”

“Wait, so you’re just standing in the middle of a field?”

“Yes. Not one I recognize. The Forbidden Forest has been deforested. The lake is gone as well.”

He felt sick. “And aren’t you… vulnerable?”

“Oh Harry, you’re so sweet to worry.” They both sounded strained, casual demeanor covering fear. “But there’s nobody within miles of here. Literally, I checked.” He continued to advance on Hogwarts’s former location, idly throwing spells in its direction.

“I’m coming,” Harry said.

“No, you’re not.” He cast a pink charm that sparkled like fireworks. “And that would’ve changed color if it could detect the last spells cast in this area, prior to my own. Somebody _thoroughly_ cleaned up after themselves.”

“What did Snape say had happened? Or anyone?” He was desperate to be there.

“They were no longer involved, as they decided to put their talents elsewhere when the battle at Hogwarts flagged.”

“So… maybe someone was biding their time until the fighting had damaged everything.”

“That is an interesting possibility.” Voldemort had stopped throwing spells and was now simply advancing through the area.

God, he just wanted someone with _answers_. Not even great ones, just ones that made this entire crisis into something manageable. He missed Dumbledore. For all that Voldemort was and was capable of, he lacked in mentorship. Unsurprisingly.

“Who has that much power, though? To _vanish_ Hogwarts?”

“Why, I hadn’t considered that.” Voldemort’s sarcasm was withering but (Harry’s stomach twisted) inexplicably arousing. He forced his thoughts elsewhere. Voldemort continued: “Pooling magical ability can be done – did you know that?”

Harry shook his head, then felt stupid. “No,” he said aloud. “How many people would it take to do this?”

“That’s the catch. I would estimate, mm, forty wizards. And that’s forty _competent_ wizards, advanced study beyond basic education. There were centuries of wards and protection spells to be unraveled. It can’t be scaled, either – you can’t use eighty students instead. Nor any number of amateur yet inexplicably lucky wizards like you.”

But in the moment’s pause before Harry would vehemently protest this, Voldemort inhaled sharply, there was a crackle of static across the Panopticon, and it went black. And Harry’s scar seared so badly that his vision blurred for a moment. He jumped up, shoving the Panopticon in his pocket, and ran out of the tent.

He headed toward the tent in which he’d met Wadha last night, but happily, he found her even closer, in a sort of shady courtyard (made shady and cool with charms rather than awnings). She was hunched with a potion as an adolescent girl handed her bowls. They both only glanced up as he approached. “I need a Portkey. Please. To Hogwarts.”

“You know better than that, I’m sure,” Wadha said.

He didn’t know if she meant Hogwarts’s prohibitions or his potential escape strategy. He proceeded on the basis of the former. “Right outside Hogwarts, rather,” he corrected. “Voldemort’s there; something’s gone wrong.”

She sized him up. And either she checked his honesty via Legilimency, or he just seemed too sincere and naïve to be planning anything, because she nodded. “Does he need anything?”

“I… don’t know. No?”

She picked up a whisk and a paring knife. “I’m giving you a Portkey back as well, a closer route than the way you traveled. Can you picture the space now?”

“Where he is?” Harry was bewildered, but nodded, forcing the scene of foggy nothingness to hang in his mind. And then Wadha plucked this silvery thought from his temple and wove it, fragile as spun sugar, around the whisk.

“For improved accuracy. Subjective magic, not popular yet in Europe.” She handed him the whisk. “Two minutes. And this – “ she did the same with a thought of her own and the knife – “will return you. Voldemort will know how to activate it.”

“Thank you.”

She acknowledged it with a short nod, scanned her potions supply, and handed him a tiny jar of an iridescent red potion. “For fortitude. And if he needs reinforcements, we have our usuals.”

Harry assumed that the last part wasn’t for him to understand, but merely pass along. “Thank you,” he repeated. And the Portkey jerked him up and away.

It was a horrible feeling, and he squeezed his eyes shut against it futilely. As such, he barely avoided falling on his face when he landed.

He found himself in the exact foggy clearing outside of Hogwarts as he had pictured for Wadha. He wanted to call out for Voldemort, but despite the covering of fog – or perhaps _because_ of it, and its concealment – he felt horribly exposed. He ran in the direction he was facing, randomly.

And he tried to concentrate on fluctuations from his scar, but its pain had subsided. It had been strange that in spite of his proximity to Voldemort recently, his scar had never hurt. So this pain was ominous.

Then up ahead, he saw a mass of something black crumpled in the dirt. He didn’t _want_ it to be Voldemort, who should never look so prone nor helpless. If not… dead. (Harry pushed that word out of his mind.) He sprinted.

It _was_ Voldemort, sprawled unnaturally on his side. As Harry ran, he threw every healing and resuscitation spell he knew at Voldemort. None of them hit.

He understood why when he reached Voldemort. He felt his magic… evaporate, that was the only way to explain the sensation. Somewhere nearby was a boundary – hopefully, god, it wasn’t permanent. He held his wand out – though it now felt like nothing more than a stick – and paced backward.

When he found the exact spot of magic, he felt its warmth flood back into his flesh, and his wand buzzed back to life. _Thank Merlin_. He scuffed a line in the dirt, and went to drag Voldemort across it.

He must have passed out as soon as he had crossed the border. Harry grabbed him under the armpits, extremely relieved to feel his shallow breathing, and pulled him out of this – whatever ‘this’ was.

He expected everything to return to normal once they had crossed that boundary – that once Voldemort was put back in a magical space, he’d pop up and say something scathing and take them both home. He didn’t. Harry ran through his barrage of resuscitation spells again, and then uncapped Wadha’s potion.

He held it to Voldemort’s lips, wondering if it was safe to pour liquids down the throat of an unconscious and prone person, and if his anti-choking spells were solid just in case, when Voldemort inhaled sharply, pushing a hand between the glass and his lips. “Idiot,” he muttered. (There was his something scathing.) “Is that a Tzu-Bo solution? That’s _topical_.” He still hadn’t opened his eyes.

“Um, okay. How?”

“Major pulse points. Tell me you know them, at least.”

“Yes.” They had learned them in Defense. He began with a dab at Voldemort’s temple. “The Panopticon stopped working when you… whatever. And my scar hurt.”

“The Panopticon probably _shorted_ ,” Voldemort said with a short, unamused laugh. Harry had moved to the pulse point on his jawline, and feeling him speak was oddly intimate. “I’ll be able to restore it.” He lifted his chin as Harry touched his carotid.

Even if he wouldn’t open his eyes, it was good to hear him talk, so Harry continued: “I felt the void. It’s like… like the spots at Hogwarts that’re magic-prohibited, right? But I’d never _felt_ it before.” He pushed back Voldemort’s sleeves to reach the next two pulse points.

Voldemort seemed to mull this over. “It may be the same mechanism.” He seemed out of breath, the way he paused after each phrase. “But so much stronger…. It would probably be more efficient to use another charm entirely.”

“And that’s why Hogwarts is gone? Once the magic is erased, there’s really nothing left?” Part of this question was sincere, but most of it was stalling, because the next two pulse points were under Voldemort’s trousers.

“Not as thoroughly…” another breathless pause, “… as this. And for Merlin’s sake.” He unbuttoned the bottom buttons of his robe, pushing the waistband of his loose silk trousers down his hips. Completely impersonal; or at least as impersonal as Voldemort had treated Harry’s nudity in the past week. “Just finish this.”

Harry tugged Voldemort’s trousers to his shins, smearing the solution on the arteries under his pelvis, at the softest and palest part of the stomach. Voldemort gave no acknowledgement of the closeness and near-sexuality. Harry dipped his fingers in the jar and moved to his bony knees.

He paused to re-dress Voldemort before doing the last few pulse points on his ankles and feet. “Um, now what?” he asked awkwardly, wishing Voldemort would spring up already.

He didn’t. Still lying ridiculously on his back, he took out his wand to shoot a few experimental sparks in the air. “Good,” he muttered, clambering to his feet and straightening his robes.

“Wadha gave me a Portkey back. She said you could activate it.” Harry offered him the paring knife.

He didn’t take it, but sizing Harry up unnervingly, he aimed his wand at Harry’s face. “Stay very still.”

“ _Hey_!” Harry slapped Voldemort’s wand away with the knife’s blade. “What are you _doing_?”

“Localized memory charm of, mm, the past thirty minutes. I’d rather not have it known I had such an adverse reaction to the void. Which is why you must stay still; I can’t guarantee accuracy otherwise.”

“That’s stupid, though.” He felt a little bit wounded. “Look, who knows how much magic you even _have_ right now, or how strong it is. Don’t waste it on me. Use it on the Portkey instead, before we’re ambushed while we’re standing here.”

It was bullshit, honestly, but some part of it resonated with Voldemort. He took the knife, and the motion he made with it looked funnily like unzipping a zipper. “We’ve got two minutes. Back to camp?”

“Outside of it, but nearer than the way we came.”

Voldemort held the knife out, grasping the very bottom portion of the handle so Harry’s hand fit just above it. Just waiting here, Harry felt like a sitting target. For what, he didn’t know.

He glanced up at Voldemort at the last minute; he looked thoughtful and worried and not at all himself. Then the Portkey jerked them both away.

 


	2. Chapter 2

They arrived on a low mesa in late morning sunlight; Harry blinked to adjust his vision. Voldemort turned a slow circle, then motioned in the distance. “The camp is that way. Though the stairs are behind us.”

Harry found them, beginning down. “So… did you actually figure out what happened to Hogwarts?” he asked as they descended.

“Of course not.” Voldemort was touchy. “There’s an enchantment somewhere, but it’s embedded within itself, do you understand? When you stand outside of it you can’t detect it, and when you’re inside of it, it may be detectable but for the lack of magic to do so. It’s clever, really.”

Harry took the time to brush away a shrub that had overgrown the steps; Voldemort was descending at a slow and unsteady pace. “Who would know that sort of magic?”

He glanced back at Voldemort in time to see his look of surprise; in turn, Voldemort dipped his head in acknowledgement. “For how little you know, your questions are fair. But I don’t know. There aren’t many prominent wizards who cast with this sort of… wit.”

But then Voldemort braced himself against the sheer stone of the mesa and turned terrifyingly sallow. With some terrible premonition that he’d faint and tumble down the stone steps, Harry ran back up to grab Voldemort’s shoulders, lowering them both to be seated. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“I thought you had already figured it out.” He sounded intensely bitter at his own helplessness. “The void affected you in only a shallow way because magic hasn’t….” He took a deep breath. “Hasn’t yet embedded itself in you physiologically.”

Of course. “And you’re, like, made of magic.” God, that void must have felt like… like the magical equivalent of a heart attack.

Voldemort said nothing to this, but dropped his head in his hands for a moment. And when he straightened up again, he shot a memory charm at Harry.

Harry barely caught it with a refraction spell, scattering it with the sunlight. “ _Stop_ that. D’you really think I’m going to, I don’t know, blackmail you?”

Voldemort didn’t answer this either, but got to his feet. “Back to Abdiah.”

Fine, they wouldn’t bloody talk about it then. He went a step ahead of Voldemort, descending the staircase. It wasn’t much of a walk, but Voldemort gave him a couple spells to cast over them both, for core temperature regulation and hydration under the rising sun. Otherwise, they didn’t sustain conversation.

When they arrived back in Abdiah, Harry needed to return Wadha’s tools, and took Voldemort with him just because. Good thing, too, as she had something for him, a viscous green potion.

“Well done,” Voldemort said, uncapping it. “Thank you.” He tipped the vial into his mouth, grimacing as he swallowed it. Still, it brought some color back into his cheeks, and his posture became steadier and more confident.

“I would take you on, you know. It’d be worth your time.” Wadha leaned in toward Voldemort. At the same time, Harry noticed the same adolescent girl in the background, chopping ingredients and listening without looking.

“Potions magic is so perfunctory, I told you – “ Voldemort was objecting.

“Europeans, you’re ridiculous, thinking there’s no subjectivity to potions – “

“There’s just not much room for _flair_ , compared to wandwork – “

Harry removed himself from this tedium and joined the girl. “What’s your name?” he asked in Parseltongue.

She looked at him, wide-eyed. She was maybe twelve years old.

He tried differently. “Can I know your name?”

She shook her head with the faintest smile, continuing to prep ingredients.

“Well, could I help?” He pointed to a flat of seeds that needed to be shelled.

“Harry.” Voldemort had taken notice. “Don’t. We need to go.”

He felt scolded and had no idea why, dammit. Wadha had turned away, and the girl barely glanced at Voldemort before looking away, too. So they left.

“What was _that_?” Harry asked, still slightly taken aback, when they were out of earshot. “Who was she?”

“POW. She looked Palestinian, though I haven’t asked.”

“But she’s a kid.”

Voldemort glanced at him. “Surely you have at least some idea of the most unsavory bits of war by now.”

Yes, yes he did. He had another thought. “And all the kids with her last night, too?”

“Mostly war orphans.”

“Oh, good. Or, well, no, that’s horrible, but.” He ducked into their tent as Voldemort held the flap for him.

“But everybody has a particular protocol for, mm, indicating their POWs. Wadha makes hers mute.”

“And you?” Harry took the Panopticon from his pocket, tossing it on the nearest ottoman.

Voldemort grinned terrifyingly. “I’d rather simply kill everyone.”

God, if Harry took offense at every horrible thing Voldemort said…. He nudged the Panopticon with his wand instead – nothing.

“So I suppose you missed that subtext last night. I haven’t got a preference or protocol, so it looked clumsy, keeping you in chains.” Voldemort turned the Panopticon over in his hands. “And it’s atypical for them to be particularly acknowledged, as well, so you’ll generally be ignored.”

He was getting irritated at the way Voldemort as though he were _actually_ a POW and not playing out this charade for political purposes. But rather than begin another fight after an emotional morning, he just turned to leave. Voldemort didn’t stop him.

On his way out, however, he grabbed the wristwatch, determined to figure it out. Voldemort, having never been informed of its delivery, couldn’t miss it; and he was fiddling with the Panopticon anyway.

Once he was sufficiently distant and alone, he worked on the watch again. Still, it revealed no magical ability whatsoever. Well, no, he found a Tempus spell keeping it accurate, but nothing more. He had walked out past the other end of the encampment and was once again in solitude. Absently and probably against his better judgment, he put the watch on. And someone behind him said, very clearly, “Beneath the blue moon, a civilization has forfeited its power. A new element arrives, a novel power put in place.”

Harry spun around frantically – there was nobody there. Bewildered, he looked all around him, of course, but he seemed to be alone. “Hello?” he ventured. Nothing. He took a few steps toward where the voice would’ve been.

“An unexpected strength in numbers. Exponential power topples old regimes.” A different voice, deeper than the last, was heard right behind him – right at the spot where he had just stood. Startled, he threw a Stinging Hex; it hit nothing and faded in the distance.

It took an embarrassingly long time for him to consider that the voices came from the watch itself. He held it up to his ear and paced thoughtfully. Behind him, an eastern accented woman: “If one by land and two by sea, your travels hinder your true journey.”

That sounded… how he had been feeling. And its wording and cadence, he finally realized, marked it as a prophecy.

He was so intrigued by this, it was supremely frustrating to not be able to properly work the mechanism. There was a soft crackle when he moved, and prophecies followed shortly thereafter. Forgetting that he was outside to let Voldemort alone to begin with, he turned back toward camp.

He didn’t make it, though. Near the central plaza, he was walking past a group of young Bedouins when he felt a snap around his wrist, and the watch was gone. Then a giggle, and a young boy ran off in triumph. Harry sprinted.

The boy led him to a thick canvas tent and ducked inside, holding the watch above his head in a display of victory. “Give it back!” Harry shouted, diving for it with all his Quidditch reflexes and sheer determination. Instead, he caught the boy’s wrist, and the child let out a piercing cry. Startled, Harry released him.

“Shush, Ko,” a woman scolded him as she pulled back the tent flaps. “Yours?” she asked Harry, nodding to the watch clasped in Ko’s tiny fist.

“Yeah. I hope I didn’t hurt him, but – “

She waved it off. “Practice. When they’re older I teach them how to snitch things with magic, but for now it’s good for them to learn not to rely on it.” She ushered him in; her tent was full of workbenches and glittering gears. “Mind if I have a look, though?” She coaxed the watch out of Ko’s hands, handing him a screwdriver and an intricate metal box instead.

“I guess.”

She had a seat at a workbench and he perched on a stool across from her.

“I’ve never been a fan of magic embedded in such… _ordinary_ objects. Muggle, cheap, mundane objects like this.” She was prying off the back. “You’re Voldemort’s, aren’t you?”

God, what an awkward question. He nodded shortly.

She went on, “He mentioned you were with him he picked up the Panopticon. Said it’d suit you. And he’s always appreciated magical shit _looking_ magical, too. ‘Scuse me.”

Ah. “You’re Ede?” he guessed.

“Yeah.” She had popped open the back and pulled out a gear, glowing purple. “Interesting piece of magic, though. You know what it does?”

“Kind of. It tells prophecies, right?”

“It does. There’s an algorithm on it, but I can’t make it out.” She was holding the gear up to a tiny blacklight. “Also Voldemort’s, I presume? What did he want with it?”

“I’m not sure. He hasn’t seen it yet.”

She looked up at him cheekily. “So you pinched it.”

“I’ll bring it back.” He shouldn’t feel as though he had to justify himself to this stranger. “In fact, I’ll take it back now – “ He held out his hand.

“There’s no hurry,” Voldemort said silkily behind him. He had just entered, stepping right over Ko who was crouched near the entrance. “As Harry will return it when his curiosity is satiated. However, I’ve brought the Panopticon back, as it shorted earlier.”

Ede frowned. “My products don’t _short_ , sir.” She pushed the watch back toward Harry perfunctorily, now distracted by this affront.

Voldemort shrugged. “Then I suppose you should look at it.” He passed the Panopticon over Harry’s head.

She unrolled the Panopticon, wincing. “What did you do to it?”

“Nothing you said I couldn’t.”

She made an impatient noise. “Not to break it, to fix it. Most convoluted magic gets inflicted on my work when clients try to fix them. Or _improve_ them,” she added with scorn.

“The usual, a few shocks, inorganic healings, anti-entropic charms.” Voldemort ticked them off with his slender fingers tapping Harry’s shoulder. “Spells you’d be able to detect, I’m sure.”

“Mm. Wait here.” Shifting a pair of goggles from her forehead to her face, she disappeared with the Panopticon into a back room.

Then Voldemort spun Harry’s chair around so Harry was forced to look right into his face. “Running off with unknown magical artifacts is stupid in the best of circumstances,” he said in a low tone.

“What do you want it for?” He was completely trapped by Voldemort, including one hand on his shoulder to keep him in his seat. The proximity felt like a threat.

“My own reasons,” he said. “But, since you’ve already taken the Prolo – prophetic rolodex,” he said, at Harry’s look – “what did you learn from it?”

Nothing, really, except that Voldemort would always keep him guessing. “There was a lot about power,” he ventured, “and I think danger.”

Voldemort’s look was withering. “Brilliant, Harry. Thank you for not wasting either of our time.”

Once again, this sardonic tone caught Harry just _right_ , and he struggled to push all the strange and untoward feelings toward Voldemort out of his mind. “Fine, show me,” he challenged Voldemort.

But he only shook his head. “At home. It would be disruptive here. For a – “ he dropped his voice as Ede re-entered the space – “number of reasons.”

“I’ll only need from you,” Ede said, holding the Panopticon before herself gingerly, “is a last surge of magic. To, mm, recalibrate it, do you understand?” She pushed her goggles off her face. “I won’t ask what happened to it, but Rabia’s name, don’t do it again.”

Voldemort nodded curtly as he drew his wand. “How?”

“Infusion’s most effective.” She placed the Panopticon before him, smoothing it flat.

Voldemort dangled his wand loosely in three fingers, straight down above the Panopticon. And he dripped a shimmering gold rope onto it – _That’s what magic looks like_ , Harry thought stupidly – allowing the magic to spread and be absorbed into the parchment.

But then Harry saw his hand quiver, briefly. Ede didn’t, apparently, but Harry grabbed Voldemort’s free hand at his side. He really, really didn’t want to see Voldemort pass out again, not in these circumstances nor any others. And without any sort of spell in mind or really any idea of whether this would work, he concentrated on pushing all of his magic into Voldemort’s grip.

It might have been coincidental, but Voldemort’s hands went still and magic continued to pour in a steady stream from his wand. Harry was sure he felt something, a sort of taut string running from his core through his palm to Voldemort. He focused on maintaining it.

Voldemort broke off the stream of magic with a swirl of his wand, as though twirling spaghetti, when the screen was reflective enough to see themselves in it. Another flick brought the Panopticon back to life. He shook off Harry’s hand discreetly. “Thank you.”

He said it not to Harry, but to Ede. “And the Prolo?” she begun to ask.

He shook his head. “I haven’t worked on it yet. It was only delivered this morning.”

“It looked like an interesting piece of magic,” she said. “Not how I would’ve built it at all.”

“I’ll bring it by sometime,” he promised, rolling up the Panopticon. Ede nodded, albeit looking a little bit dissatisfied, and they left.

Once they were a good distance away, Voldemort asked, “What was that?”

“What?”

Voldemort gave him a somewhat pained look, and Harry realized he was forcing him to verbalize something he’d rather not – just like Voldemort always did to him. “That surge of magic.”

“I don’t know. Force of will?”

“But it was wandless magic, clearly. Was there a spell? Or a mantra or a koan, non-Western magic?” Voldemort’s reluctance to speak about his own weakness was obviously outweighed by his curiosity.

“There wasn’t anything. You want to recreate it to figure it out?” Harry asked, mostly but not entirely facetiously.

“Mm, you don’t want that. Otherwise I’d just keep you around as a spare of magical reserves.”

So they were both uncomfortable, and both speaking in this forced-careless way. Harry gladly let the silence lapse, and turned over the Prolo in his hands a few times. “I want to know more about this,” he finally said.

“Merlin, why.” They had crossed to the outskirts of camp. “You _may_ , I just thought you would’ve recognized its… sensationalist nature.”

“How do you mean?”

“When do heard those prophecies, didn’t you immediately begin making connections? Assume that the prophecy spoke to precisely your own circumstances?” Voldemort allowed Harry into their tent.

“Kind of.” He was reluctant to say yes and validate Voldemort’s point.

“Every prophecy could be applicable to hundreds of events. The broad ones, the specific ones, the aphorisms. The Prolo offers archetypes, really, ones that could be useful to either the figures or situation at hand.”

“But if it’s specific – “

“Not exclusively so,” Voldemort corrected with some impatience. “It’s just… a tool with which to think creatively. Running off with it, without knowing the precautions, is about the most careless thing one can do with it.”

“Apart from actually acting on a prophecy.”

He hated that Voldemort looked surprised whenever he said anything smart. “Apart from that, yes,” he agreed blandly. “If you’d like, I can show you how to calibrate it.”

Now that he had a better sense of what the Prolo would and wouldn’t do, it wasn’t nearly so irresistible, but he did like the idea of settling in for the afternoon after an… eventful morning and midday. “Please.”

And so, following a quick lie-down (for which Harry triple-promised that Voldemort would wake up again), they fiddled with the Prolo, Voldemort making the occasional note. “Don’t you feel, I don’t know, superstitious?” Harry asked, after a third completed page of speculation.

“Superstitious? We do _magic_ ,” Voldemort deadpanned. “With enough relevant prophecies, I should be able to, mm, triangulate a course of events based on its trends and predictions.”

“And how close are you now?”

Voldemort flipped through the pages, leaving a few arrows and scribbles as he went. “Not very. Or, if I were satisfied with shoddy guesswork, this may be enough. But for respectable work, not very.”

“Oh.” Harry got up, restless. “D’you want wine?” It was late enough in the afternoon, and god help him if they had any further crises for the day.

“Yes, thank you.” He was re-calibrating the Prolo based on, as far as Harry could tell, the headline of the Panopticon before him, detailing a hostage situation of Muggles by a band of radical German wizards. Harry lit the overhead lamps, casting everything in a golden glow, and brought a chilled wine and glasses back to the table.

“ _And if it may, it will,_ ” a new prophecy intoned. “ _But nothing is truly complete without the death._ ”

“Morbid,” Harry remarked as he poured them both glasses.

Voldemort glanced up with raised eyebrows. “If revolution weren’t painful, everyone would do it.”

Harry felt he should be more bothered by Voldemort’s politics than he was at this point. He sat back. “Does that help?”

But Voldemort shook his head. “It’s nothing I don’t already understand.”

Then Harry thought of something. “What about me?”

“What?”

“I want to hear the prophecies about myself.” The cadence of the day and the initial flush of wine made him a little bit punchy. “You’ve probably already listened to all the ones about yourself.”

“No, I haven’t, and no, you may not.” Voldemort had on a pair of reading glasses (absurdly, held up by magic) over which he looked now. “It’s one of the major tenets of Divination, that seeking out one’s own prophecies is… madness, at best. It becomes self-fulfilling, at least insofar as one can no longer act without _knowledge_ of the prophecy, regardless.” He gave the tiniest shrug. “A tiresome principle, but true enough.”

“You’re not curious?”

Voldemort swirled his wine a bit too deliberately before answering. “Of course I am. But the last prophecy I pursued… turned out very poorly.” He raised his eyes to Harry’s scar.

 _Oh shit_. “Uh, really?”

“Yes.” He made some small attempt at composing himself. “In any case, prophecies are an inexact means of predicting others’ future actions. But my _own_ – what could I understand better than my own future plans.”

“No, you don’t, how could you – “

Voldemort stopped him with a wave. “Unlike _you_ , and your apparent acceptance of life as something that happens to you rather than something you effect for yourself. ‘Indifference is the deadweight of history,’” he quoted. “’The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. But nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?’” He looked to Harry in a challenging way, as though he’d just proven something.

What was he on about. Was this an impromptu motivational speech? “I’m not _indifferent_ ,” he began, affronted.

It was not inspirational, apparently, but goading, since Voldemort deftly replied, “Then I need you to take care of Scrimgeour.”

Harry’s stomach turned and the wine soured in his mouth. “I’m not killing anyone. And I’m not _assassinating_ the _Minister_ , my god.”

Voldemort was unmoved. “I had no expectations that you’d be able to. I only need him re-situated in a less volatile position.” Voldemort had put down the Prolo and was speaking steadily, seriously to him. “His power has been stripped in its own way, but he’s still a tempting pawn for whom I’d rather not account. You will recall the animosity between Snape and Bellatrix over Scrimgeour.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Neither deserve him. I only need him neutralized.”

Harry had this awful idea of putting Scrimgeour under Petrificus totalus in perpetuity. Clearly not the way to go. Completely horrifying, in fact. But…. “Then what do you suggest?”

“If I handled it myself… I don’t have the patience for non-violent solutions that you seem to have.”

“I know,” Harry said drily. (The alternative would be horror at every time Voldemort said something like this, but… he just didn’t have it in him at the moment.)

“One solution might be akin to the Muggles’ witness protection program – false memories, new appearance, _any_ explanation given to survivors. The wizards have a program like it too,” Voldemort added offhandedly, “but if you knew about it, they’d have failed at their job.”

Harry drained his wine glass as he thought. “Could he be restored someday?”

Voldemort grimaced. “Why? Make him a Muggle, while you’re at it, for the shorter lifespan.”

“You are horrible.” And although it came out as a somewhat light comment, he really did mean it. “If his identity is erased permanently, that really is no different than killing him, is it?”

“Oh, Merlin – “ Voldemort removed his glasses to run a hand down his face “ – philosophy?”

“Ethics.”

“Ah.” He considered. “Then yes, you might say that it would functionally kill him. But not formally.”

Harry so wanted to return to this afternoon and the easy peace of poring over prophecies. “I’ll find some other way,” he muttered. Voldemort said nothing.

 

Some time later, after more fiddling with both the Prolo and Panopticon, Voldemort began prepping dinner, and Harry joined him. “Cube this.” Voldemort handed him an eggplant.

“Wait.” Setting it aside, he shifted the bottom of his robe to reveal the nappy that Voldemort had put on him for the earlier nap (not strictly necessary, but a soothing and perverse gesture of normalcy). The safety pins had some kind of magic holding them in place, and he tugged at them. “First unlock these ridiculous things.” Too much wine the entire afternoon had left him bursting.

Voldemort glanced down. “They unlock when you’re wet. I thought you’d have realized it by now.”

 _Oh my god_. “But I’ve got to use the toilet.” And it would be stupid and strange to just stand here and pee. Not only had the wine escalated his need rather quickly, but also obliterated his shyness, so he crossed his legs in a desperate gesture.

“No.”

Unbelievable. “Fine.” He parted the bottom of his robe and hitched it up, leaned against the counter, and spread his legs, looking into Voldemort’s incredulous face all the while. With a small shudder, he began pissing into his nappy.

The stream was audible to them both, and the heat creeping up his belly was amazing. The soft, warm, wet fabric hung heavy and satisfying between his legs. And even more amazing was how silently Voldemort was watching.

It seemed to go on forever, and he let it, slowing the stream to enjoy the spread of wet warmth beneath his balls. Filthy, this was filthy, as they were both motionless at Harry’s performance.

When he finished, he nearly reached to shake off – as though that would make a whit of difference – but, stopping, dropped his hand. His nappy, the rubber pants now beaded with moisture, was still defiantly visible. “There,” Harry said shortly. Leaving the hot, wet nappy hanging from his hips, he dropped his robe back into place to conceal it.

Voldemort apparently had nothing to say. Uncharacteristically chewing his lip, he briskly left the room. ( _Was he blushing?_ ) Harry rinsed his hands and the eggplant.

He was nearly finished cubing it when Voldemort returned. And while Harry had assumed he’d gone for something, he just resumed dinner prep. “Toss those in olive oil,” he said, “and then go pick a bulb of garlic.”

“Where is there garlic?”

Voldemort indicated a direction out the window. “They keep a traveling garden. No small feat to maintain, even with magic.”

“And I can just… take something?”

“If you ask nicely. And go change.”

Harry decided to handle these in reverse order, leaving to change in the toilet. No time to wank, nor any time to dwell upon the way Voldemort had been looking at him. Which was fine, because he was still trying to push the whole sex magic thing out of his mind.

But after cleaning up and leaving, his thoughts returned to Scrimgeour. Not that he _liked_ Scrimgeour – and the feeling was mutual – but he really probably needed Scrimgeour to be a part of this politicking. Because Harry certainly couldn’t go at it alone. But who he really needed was… Snape.

That realization was even less pleasant, and he bit back a groan. Yet, it was undeniable that Snape may be the only person who knew where Scrimgeour was at this point. Not to mention, Snape may be the only one as compromised and as full of conflicting loyalties as Harry right now. Bugger. As he conjured a Patronus – with the happiness from this morning that Voldemort hadn’t died, actually – he spoke into his wand tip: “I need Scrimgeour.” And with a flick, he sent the stag running.

The garden was currently being kept fairly close to their tent, and he followed a few teenagers chattering happily (in Arabic rather than Parseltongue, surprisingly) as they carried over empty pots. Wadha was there too, bless her, and acknowledged him with a nod as he approached.

“Voldemort sent me for garlic. Please,” he told her, uncertain about any other apparent protocol here.

It wasn’t Wadha who plucked a bulb out of the rich earth, but the adolescent girl who had been prepping ingredients earlier. As she wrapped it in parchment, Wadha said, “Bring him peppers too. Good for strength.”

He wondered if she had seen or understood how very weak Voldemort had been earlier. Or what investment she might have in his health. “What do I do with them?” he asked as the girl added a handful of long purple peppers to the package.

Wadha barely shrugged. “Cooking won’t affect their magic.”

Magic peppers, then. He took the bundle from the girl. “Thanks. Thank you,” he said to them in turn.

But on the way back, he was stopped by Snape’s Patronus. “It was stupid to come to Hogwarts. They know.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Even putting aside questions of who ‘they’ were or what ‘they’ knew, this could only be a disaster. And worse, he didn’t feel like he could let Voldemort know; it’d only exacerbate things. He sent a second Patronus to Snape, pleading for detail and guidance – although he thought it should’ve been a self-evident request – and lingered outside for as long as he could before Voldemort would get suspicious. When he was about to give up, the Patronus returned. But instead of being useful at all, it only said in a low tone, “Choose your loyalties now. Either is safer than the position you find yourself in currently.”

 _Snape_ , of all people…. God. He would find this out some other way, then. But for now, he returned to the tent.

“Finally. Watch that saucepan.” Voldemort took the parcel almost without looking at him. “What delayed you?”

Harry shrugged, hoping to lie convincingly. “The garden was busy. Wadha sent me with peppers too, for you. She said they’re for strength.” He stirred the simmering tomato sauce.

“Harry.” Voldemort’s tone was mildly amused and mildly exasperated. “Did you really just take them? Even if you lack all common sense and self-preservation, please say that someone at least once read you Snow White as a child.”

Harry was coming to realize that Voldemort truly enjoyed these moments of impatient didacticism. “What, you think she wants to poison you?”

“You think she doesn’t?” Voldemort countered. “You only met her yesterday; where on earth does this _trust_ come from?” He was shaping bread dough, and his movements became just a little more forceful as he spoke. “Your idea that people are good is _charming_ , of course, but it will be your downfall soon. Mince a few cloves of garlic,” he added.

Harry went in search of a knife. “And you?”

Voldemort looked nearly scandalized. “I have no downfall.”

“Being cynical isn’t as dangerous as being trusting?” He only cared a little, but he really wanted Voldemort to lecture him. And maybe hopefully say something scathing. It was indulgent, yes.

Voldemort whisked the egg wash a bit too briskly. “ _Experienced_ ,” he hissed. “How am I to believe you care about power and politics if you don’t even understand what an assassination is? The garlic needs to be sautéed in olive oil.”

After the garlic was set, Harry curiously picked up a pepper. “But you think _everything_ is politics.”

“It is!” Voldemort exclamation was insistent but not angry. “And if there were anyone else who understood that, anyone who saw crises and advantages where I do, then _they’d_ achieve what I’ve achieved. It’s not unreasonable, it’s just that most everybody is too dull and indifferent to see it.”

This outburst made Voldemort so surprisingly human that Harry couldn’t formulate a response at first. While he thought, he cut the tip off the pepper to smell it – fresh, fruity, spicy. He popped it into his mouth experimentally. “Do you want them to understand? Or, I dunno, do you just want to be king of the clods?”

Voldemort was watching him slice off and chew bits of the pepper. “I won’t heal whatever that does to you,” he warned Harry. “And no, it’d be easier to simply lead them through their useless lives.”

Well, it wasn’t eugenics, and it wasn’t genocide, so… there was that. He stepped out of the way for Voldemort to put the shaped dough in the oven, and cut himself another piece of pepper. “I don’t think this does anything. Want to put them on a salad?”

Voldemort gave him another exasperated look. “If plants are grown to be magical, the properties take time. Potions either concentrate or synthesize the effects. And I am _very_ sorry to have interrupted your education, since you clearly need it.”

God, Voldemort…. “I need you to – “ Harry began compulsively, and slapped a hand over his mouth before the words ‘kiss me’ emerged. What was the matter with him; he didn’t even feel uninhibited.

“What?” Voldemort glanced over his shoulder from some washing up.

“Nothing. I need you to try this,” Harry improvised breezily. “Wadha said strength, but I think it might be confidence. Or maybe initiative.” One or the other, as he felt more and more certain that it wouldn’t be at all bad if he had actually made his request. Voldemort had acquiesced to kissing Harry once before, after all – if only as manipulation to shut Harry up, but.

Voldemort turned with a frown. “I need neither of those.”

Fair enough. Or maybe the peppers were secretly for _him_ , in some subversion of Voldemort or something. He didn’t quite know where he and Wadha stood (though she did delightfully make eye contact with him in a way few of the Hajaya would). “Can I keep them?”

“You may.”

Harry shoved the remaining peppers in his pocket, and his fingers found a small jar within. The empty jar that had contained Wadha’s potion. It jogged his memory once more to Hogwarts. And to Snape. But there was no way to find out more without giving himself away.

Voldemort was faux-roasting vegetables with a kitchen torch spell. Harry gazed at him for a few moments, trying to initiate a strategic yet innocent-seeming conversation. Then – it was too bloody obvious – he realized everything he wanted to know was in the Panopticon. He didn’t _need_ Voldemort, not for wartime information nor anything else. His task in the kitchen apparently done, he took the Panopticon from the table.

Seated in his bedroom, he could figure this out without letting on anything to Voldemort. But first, he’d have to find Snape himself, on any of these complex maps.

He scanned the major public places. Diagon Alley looked eerily empty, a few pulsing lights around its edges indicating some Harry-specific wards from when he and Voldemort had exploded the street. The map showed as many Aurors – uniformed and plain-clothed – as citizens. Knockturn Alley, on the other hand, was relatively busy – and Harry _did_ see some names he recognized, if only by the older bloodlines of Slytherin. (No Malfoys though, not this time.)

There wasn’t a single soul in Hogsmeade, which was sickening, but at least it still existed. A newspaper blurb from the Prophet unfolded itself onscreen: ‘Hogsmeade evacuation without an end in sight,’ with the subheading: ‘Stray Magic Obliteration effects feared to have contaminated residents.’

Well, at least the term _Magic Obliteration_ wouldn’t cause any panic or anything. Harry read the article for any details – it seemed safe to assume that it was the same magic that had been done at Hogwarts – but all the article indicated was that some evacuees had been feeling “weak and powerless.” Well, yes. He cycled through other articles, but either nobody knew about it or everybody did, because nothing else mentioned the Obliteration in the past two weeks.

Which was as long as Harry had been gone at this point, nearly two weeks with Voldemort. So whatever had happened, had happened _recently_. In fact, Bellatrix and Voldemort had been at Hogwarts even within that week. _Why_ wasn’t the press – whatever was left of it – covering this?

He rerolled the Panopticon before he worked himself into more of a panic. Snape barely registered in his memory anymore, oh well. He needed to return to Hogwarts, to find _anyone_ to learn _anything_. But there were apparently highly sensitive wards there set just for them.

Who wouldn’t want him there? Harry’s strange recent… togetherness with Voldemort had muddled his sense of who his opponents might actually be now. At least whoever had set the wards hadn’t moved quickly enough to find him on the Hogwarts grounds the first time. So he’d set aside that question until he actually knew what was happening. Instead, he went to consult Voldemort’s books.

While he wasn’t at all confident that none of them were cursed, he was pretty confident he’d be able to persuade Voldemort to undo whatever curse they might put on them. So he began with a stack on charms: looking up Magic Obliteration (under M and O); disappearances; evaporation; and magic-blocking wards. There was nothing in any of them that was remotely like the circumstances at Hogwarts. He moved on to a shelf labeled Defensive Magic (which must be how Voldemort had known Defense Against the Dark Arts during his school days, before wartime). He searched for the same topics. Nothing, until he paged through a dark arts book – clearly misplaced, as it was undoubtedly _offensive_ magic. There was a minor paragraph marked:

_Magic Obliteration: Experimental. Banned under MCCS 8.2.11, 91.1.23. See Appendix A for legalities._

_Enervates opponents by neutralizing magic abilities, temporarily or permanently (see Variations under Spellcasting, p. 412). Ability may either be re-channeled or simply dispersed. May affect physical health of target, will almost certainly affect psychological health._

_Generally considered obsolete due to dangers posed to caster; imperfect barrier in spellcasting creates potential for spell ‘backwash.’ More advanced spells available to freeze or hinder magic without risk are obviously favored; this is listed for the sake of completeness of magical history and theory._

There were no instructions for casting it, and Harry couldn’t say whether it could be applied spatially (could most spells, for that matter?) – but it was the best lead he had. He rose to look for a bookmark, but as he was searching, there was a cursory knock behind him as Voldemort entered the study. Dammit.

“What are you doing?”

It was a neutral tone, not angry, but Harry didn’t want him knowing about the impending crisis at Hogwarts anyway. “Nothing. Looking over things. You can have the Panopticon back, if you were looking for it.”

“I was looking for _you_.” He left the Panopticon where it lay – it’d been a weak diversion at best – but approached the table where Harry had laid stacks of books. That dark arts one wasn’t the only one open, but it was the most prominent.

As Voldemort surveyed the pages, Harry quickly stepped up to the table, flipping books closed as near as he could reach. “Sorry. I’ll clean these up. Is dinner ready?” He stretched across the table, to grab the dark arts book, but Voldemort caught it open by a finger and lifted it out of Harry’s grasp.

“Really, what are you so _guilty_ about,” he muttered as he flipped it back open. “Hopefully not merely from reading a dark arts title; I didn’t think you were _that_ much of a Pollyanna.”

“I just… shouldn’t have been in your books, I’m sorry.” He continued to gather them and re-place them on their shelves, keeping Voldemort and the dark arts title in his peripheral vision.

But now Voldemort was reading the same page he had, about the Obliteration. And Harry, for lack of any other excuse, just fell silent and had a seat while Voldemort read.

Then Voldemort had a seat as well, across from him, and very patronizingly handed the book back. “What did you plan to use this for?” he asked lowly.

“ _What_?” Of all the things Harry braced himself for, that wasn’t one of them. “Nothing, I don’t want to use it. I…” He might as well ease up on protecting Voldemort a bit, that they could talk about Hogwarts if not its surveillance. “I can’t stop thinking about Hogwarts, and what happened to it. Look, there’s an article that calls it Magic Obliteration – “  he grabbed the Panopticon to show Voldemort “ – but it’s not mentioned _anywhere_ else in the papers. So I was looking for references.”

It was probably to his advantage that he was a bad liar, because Voldemort didn’t ask any further questions. He flipped through recent articles on the Panopticon with a frown. “Censorship,” he said. “Or some sort of suppression of information, at least. You only saw that phrase because the Panopticon picked up the earlier version of the article, but later in the day it was altered. The text of every Prophet in every home, enchanted to omit the phrase. Readers would have only seen it if they were up very early this morning. And dinner is going cold.”

Right. Harry took the dark arts book with him to the dining room, and Voldemort continued to fiddle with the Panopticon. “But who even controls the Prophet now?” Harry asked.

“The same people as always, the wealthy and influential wizards with a stranglehold on magical politics. Garlic bread and eggplant parmesan are in the oven.”

Setting the table, Harry served them both. “So, they did this to Hogwarts?”

Bad question; he saw it on Voldemort’s face. “No, of course not. The only thing they might have in common would be ideological similarities.” A pause. “But your research wasn’t bad, for a student.”

“But is it… right?” Harry poured more wine. “That sounded like a dueling spell, not, I don’t know, a forcefield.”

“The properties of spells can be manipulated to accommodate difference like that. Whether the spellcaster used that particular spell, it’s similar enough to work on extrapolating a reversal.”

“I don’t want you to go back, though.”

He hadn’t thought much of it as he said it, but Voldemort’s look afterward made him feel vulnerable. But all Voldemort said was, “The reversal of this charm doesn’t need to be worked on in situ. Not yet, at least.”

“Oh.” He had no idea how that might actually be done, but Voldemort was typically confident. So maybe he’d learn.

But instead, after a time, Voldemort added, “You’ll be the first subject.” Off-handedly, too, as though Harry wouldn’t object.

He nearly choked. “You’re not taking away my magic.”

“It’s not irreversible, necessarily.”

Some bloody consolation. “No. Try it on some charmed object or something.”

Voldemort seemed a bit disappointed that Harry wasn’t as enthusiastic about this experiment as he was. “Well, the magic of charmed objects isn’t innate, for one. It’s an artificial aura. And two, the magic of Hogwarts is nearly organic; it’s grown and permutated far beyond the intentions of the original spellcasters.” He seemed to catch his own tone of admiration and stopped himself. “So no, it needs to be something living.”

Harry was more exasperated than anything when he pulled Wadha’s peppers from his pocket, tossing them across the table. “Here, here’s your organic magic.”

And Voldemort either didn’t see or didn’t care how facetious that was, as he nodded. “You’ll learn on those.”

Following dinner, they cleared the table but for a single pepper in the center. Harry looked back at Voldemort for direction, who only told him, “Push its magic out.”

Having taken his wand out, expecting a spell, he now let it flag between his fingers. “How?”

“ _Push_ ,” Voldemort repeated. “There are spells, but you need to practice without them first.”

He felt both inept and self-conscious. “Fine.” He pointed his wand at the helpless fruit and tried mentally draining its magic.

Voldemort made an unhappy noise. “ _Push_ , not pull. Re-channeling its magic is beyond you, for now. Just disperse it.” He began walking away.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to consult my books. Continue.”

But he made no progress. At all. The one time he thought he might’ve done something, Voldemort snorted and told him he’d just shot off his _own_ magic. It could have been worse, though – at least Voldemort let him go to bed that night.

“Tomorrow,” Voldemort said shortly. “That’s all the time you’ve got to learn the spell.”

Harry was fairly certain that everything he might have said would have only come out as a whine; instead he wiped his wand off with a handful of his robes, as it’d grown damp with sweat from how hard he’d been clenching it. “Okay.”

 

It was deep into the night when Harry awoke, unable to breathe. There was a _thing_ on his chest, a warm wiggling thing compressing his lungs. To compound matters, his collar was being constricted in a panic-inducing way. Unable to see in the pitch night, he reached up, grabbed something like flesh, and violently willed its magic to cease.

It all happened in a split second, mind, and he would’ve made better choices if he’d been more awake for them. But the weight on his chest shifted – someone sitting back against his stomach, he realized – and the tugging at the collar stopped.

“What’d you _do_?” a small voice whimpered in Parseltongue.

Oh god. “Lumos,” Harry said as he grabbed his wand. The boy, Ko, was sitting on him, looking anxiously at his hands. “I don’t know. Get up and I’ll fix it.”

Ko didn’t move. “I just wanted that,” he said, pointing to Harry’s collar as though that were perfectly normal. “But you….” He snapped his fingers, clearly expecting something to happen, and whimpered louder when nothing did. He was older than Harry’s first impression, probably more like seven than four, just quiet, except for in stupid times like this. He looked at Harry with hysterical tears in his eyes, clambering off.

“Okay, here, give me your hands. It’s alright.” Harry held both hands out, planning to do what he’d done to Voldemort that morning.

“I _won’t_ , I don’t want to.” Ko backed up toward the doorway. Harry couldn’t blame him, but he also didn’t want to involve Voldemort.

“I’m sorry, I’ll fix it. But you have to come here.” Somewhere in the back of his mind, Harry celebrated figuring out the magic obliteration, but god, under _these_ circumstances?

Ko shook his head, darting out before Harry could grab him. Bugger. “Hey!” Barely pausing to throw his robe over his shoulders, he sprinted after him into the hallway in time to see him duck into Voldemort’s bedroom. _Shite._

Defeated, Harry simply waited in the hallway for them. A minute later, Voldemort emerged from his bedroom, steering Ko in front of him. The boy was chattering in tearful Arabic and refused to look at Harry.

Despite the fact that Ko’s words seemed addressed to Voldemort, he ignored the boy completely to say to Harry, “Well?”

 _Well_. “I don’t know, I woke up and he was on my chest. I wasn’t thinking.”

Voldemort pushed Ko farther down the hall, toward the living area. “And what was he doing?”

“Um. Trying to take – “ he couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence with ‘my collar’ – too complicit _and_ too personal – and so gestured with a brush of his hand instead.

Voldemort sat Ko onto an ottoman and addressed him in halting Arabic. “Put on tea,” he said to Harry over his shoulder.

He did, but behind him he could hear Ko’s tone escalating from whatever Voldemort was pressing him on. He wouldn’t even acknowledge Parseltongue, when Voldemort tried switching into the language. Harry just barely caught ‘Wadha’ and ‘Fatima’ amidst the conversation. By the time he had brought out tea, Ko had clearly already had a good cry. Voldemort looked thin-lipped and tense. Harry looked at him for an explanation, but he only made a rather impatient motion to sit.

He handed them tea, but really he needed to know what was happening. So when Voldemort moved to get up, Harry snapped, “Stop.”

This earned him a look of surprise – although somehow not anger. And somehow Voldemort remained seated, if restlessly. “Ko will sit still with you until you restore his magic, he’s said.”

“I need to know what he was _doing_.”

“You do not.”

Sometimes he could hit Voldemort. “I deserve to. And then I’ll work on the spell.”

Voldemort picked a tea leaf out of his cup idly. “You remember Wadha’s POW? The girl?”

“Fatima.”

“She thought she would conduct a _rescue mission_ for you.”

The ease with which he said this concealed the upset of the situation, Harry could tell. But he didn’t probe _why_. “Oh.” He set his teacup down to work on Ko. “Would you tell Wadha?”

Voldemort shook his head. “No. Ko will tell Fatima that he was unable to enter.”

There was a palpable discomfort for them all, so Harry just let Voldemort leave. And then he turned his attention to Ko, calmer now as he slurped tea. “Okay, Ko, ready?” He kept his voice light but really had no idea what he was doing. Ko looked at him over the rim of his tea cup, which Harry decided was consent enough.

Voldemort hadn’t left them alone, as it turned out, but had returned with a few books. Harry had taken one of Ko’s wrists to begin with, but Voldemort frowned. “Don’t touch him.”

“Why not?” Harry would’ve added that physical contact had worked on Voldemort, but assumed he wouldn’t appreciate it at the moment.

“Because Hogwarts is _gone_ ; what would you hold onto?”

That stung. “Then I should be practicing on an empty space, shouldn’t I?”

“Don’t be obtuse.” He set the books down, taking a seat beside Harry. “Do it from scratch once, and then you may learn the runes.”

Runes, fantastic. He dropped Ko’s wrist and grasped his wand. “I can’t have a spell?”

“No.”

In that case… it’d be like conjuring a Patronus, wouldn’t it? He squeezed his eyes shut, to focus on relaying all the goodwill and magic he was able. His wand grew hot, but there wasn’t a direction to the magic like there usually was. Harry had an absurd fear his wand would overheat, and explode, or boil over, or something.

“Harry,” Voldemort said beside him, impossibly softly. “What you need is to channel the magic of the environment. Not your own. Keep your eyes closed, just listen,” he instructed. “You need to affirm that the world is naturally magical, that it can be felt in the air. And then you need to fill in the spaces and fix the aberrations.”

It wasn’t quite zen, but it reframed Harry’s mentality enough to be helpful. He would fix the boy, and then Hogwarts. He pocketed his wand – it felt too limiting – and stretched open his hands to conceptualize the magic surrounding him. He felt – or thought he felt – the magic’s condensation gathering in his hands, and he tried to direct it toward Ko.

“Good,” Voldemort murmured. Harry felt his Legilimency, pressing into his mind, but didn’t let it distract him. “Condensation, yes. The air is heavy with magic, it won’t be difficult to imbue the boy with it. Don’t use force, just allow it to happen. You are only facilitating what is natural.”

He concentrated harder, letting the magic grow heavy, somehow paradoxically weighty and ephemeral. He wanted to see it, see what his magic looked like, but he couldn’t open his eyes just yet. “How is this?” He barely mouthed the words.

“More.”

Ko shifted then, whining a bit and nearly breaking Harry’s concentration. Voldemort made an impatient noise, shifting on the sofa, and then the boy went still. “Sleeping,” Voldemort said briefly at the twinge of concern he felt in Harry’s psyche. “Listen. You only need to re-distribute the magic, Harry, fill in the gaps where you know the magic should be. The magic is already there, it only needs you.”

He could almost let his _self_ slip, in this cosmic utility. Used, he was being used, just like –

“ _Focus_ ,” Voldemort hissed. “The magic needs to solidify before you can release it. You don’t know how much power you hold right now.”

His hands were hot and heavy, but Voldemort’s presence and voice were just so bloody distracting –

He felt a glimmer of surprise at that, a feeling that was not his own. _Dammit_ , damn his stupid feelings and Legilimency both. He said nothing, and Voldemort persisted: “You might have as much magic as you can hold now. Keep it firm in your grasp while I draw the directional rune.” He felt Voldemort brush his palm, dipping a finger into the magic. Then he said, “You may open your eyes, slowly.”

A glowing line of runes stretched between him and Ko. Before Voldemort said anything, Harry could feel the groove they created in the air, allowing him to direct his magic. His palms looked empty (to his disappointment) but felt full, so he stretched one toward the boy and _pushed_.

It seemed to work? The magic felt lighter, in any case. Ko looked unchanged and Voldemort uncertain. When he had given Ko the first handful of magic, Voldemort gestured for him to wait. “He’s restored enough. The rest can remain with you. Where’s your wand?”

Harry pulled it out with his free hand. “Why?”

Taking it, Voldemort dabbed the tip in magic, dragging the warmth up Harry’s arm in swirls. “A reserve, for when you restore Hogwarts. Don’t waste it on inane magic before then.” When the magic had been… restored?, Voldemort returned his wand. “Take him outside. Don’t wake him, just leave him in the square.”

“But – “

“Mm, wait, actually.” He looked Harry up and down, then stepped in closer, beginning to unbutton Harry’s robes.

Jesus Christ. “What?” he asked, shoving Voldemort’s hands off him.

He persisted. “You’re in a nappy?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Harry hissed, again unsuccessfully fending off his hands. “Why?”

Voldemort’s disposition had switched abruptly, now that the harnessing of magic was finished. “You’ll wear it out,” he said. “Without your robe. Perhaps it will be incentive enough that you’ll return directly, this time. And while you’re out, you should put together an explanation for what contact you had with Snape.”

So, there was quite a few alarming points there, and Harry couldn’t respond to any of them. Sod it. “Don’t make me,” he said, even as Voldemort was undoing the top button of his robe. “I’ll tell you about Snape.”

Voldemort raised his eyebrows. “Yes, you will. But the boy has to be returned. Before anyone awakes,” he added pointedly.  “The fresh air will do you good.” Another button undone, so his robe slipped off his shoulders.

“This is sadistic,” Harry muttered. Yet his stomach was twisting on itself in a way that was just as much arousal as panic. As per usual with Voldemort. He acquiesced, unbuttoning his robe fully himself, if only to distance Voldemort. And maybe – maybe! – to give himself some illusion of autonomy. Tossing his robe over the back of the couch, he kept his chin high as he looked at Voldemort. “Happy?”

“You won’t be, if you go out like that. Do you know any warming spells?”

“Yes.” He shook his wand out of his robes, casting one, and then realized ridiculously that he’d have no pockets to put it. Well, he’d be levitating Ko anyway. He scooped the boy up with a Mobilicorpus and left without looking at Voldemort.

The charm was efficient enough that he felt no change in temperature, stepping out of the tent. Almost as though he weren’t outside in just a nappy. The camp was still and silent but for his presence. And Ko, still rolled in the ball he’d fallen asleep in on the couch, levitated a few feet to his right.

But… the center of camp was lit. Was it always? Or (his stomach clenched) would he encounter someone there? He considered leaving Ko right here, he’d come to eventually, but… that would be mean. He proceeded toward the square and hoped.

A figure with long dark hair was seated with her back to him, still and alert in the crisp darkness. Fatima, of course. But then, where was Wadha? Harry looked for somewhere to leave Ko silently, some chair or bench to lower him onto and then retreat. But when Fatima heard his footsteps, she turned.

Her gaze didn’t even try to politely overlook his nudity and nappy. But she lingered longest on the collar – what she’d been after in the first place. She picked up a paring knife, beckoning him closer.

“Um, I brought back Ko,” Harry attempted, hoping to redirect her attention. “Where should I put him?”

With the knife as a wand, she conjured a pile of pillows underneath where the boy now hovered, motioning for Harry to drop him. But then her attention returned to the collar. She did a few spells on it, in a curious rather than determined way. None of them had any effect, and she nodded as though that confirmed something. She motioned him still closer. A few more spells; Harry felt it grow warm against his skin. But still, nothing.

Fatima was becoming frustrated. When she looked from the collar into his face, she tried saying something. The sound was indistinct, but the shape of her lips was unmistakable. _Free_.

But Harry was distracted from this plea because as she had mouthed it, he’d seen the gaping darkness of her mouth. Her tongue had been cut out. He fought back a sick feeling – _free_ ,  indeed.

He unconsciously reached toward her, to lay a hand on her mouth and channel all that spare magic into healing her. But she pushed his hand away and pointed to herself exaggeratedly. _I’ll do it_. Then she pointed back to Harry’s collar.

She needed it for her own reasons, apparently. He tried Engorgio again, but of course Voldemort had fixed that. Then some weakening charms, freezing charms, levitation, but nothing had an effect.

Fatima had perched on the table between them, and taken his collar in two fingers. She only concentrated on a single link, rolling it back and forth as it grew hot. After a few minutes, she must have dissolved it (melted it?), because she pulled the chain from around his neck. Climbing down from the table, she held it close to her face, examining it.

Her body language indicated that she was done with him, so all he could say was. “Be careful. Let me know if you need anything” – sounding much more authoritative than he felt – before turning back.

But Fatima made another audible exhalation, and he looked back at her. She pointed into the dark desert, away from camp. “ _Free_ ,” she mouthed once more.

Ah. “I need to stay, for now. I choose to,” he amended. He didn’t even like hearing himself say it, but… it was true enough, right? Exasperated, she apparently gave up on him. Instead, wrapping a knife’s handle with the chain, she held it aloft and – _poof_! Harry gave a startled cry as she disappeared. _Fuck_. Well, at least one of them insisted on their own freedom. He turned back.

Voldemort was apparently waiting when Harry entered. “What kept you?” He saw that the collar was gone, again. “If you spent all that time on the collar….”

“No. Kind of. Don’t you want to know about Snape?” He found himself too exhausted and muddled to be coy or strategic at the moment.

“I do. In the bedroom, as it’s already been a long night.”

So it had been, but… Voldemort’s bedroom. “Uh, sure.”

Voldemort glanced over his shoulder as he went. “It is easier to speak in the dark. Come.”

Harry’s ambivalence held him nearly frozen. But, ultimately more curious than apprehensive, he followed.

Voldemort idly cast Tempus as they entered; _4:10_ glowed in the air before them. Making a dissatisfied noise, he vanished it. “Where did you leave the boy?”

“At the center of camp.” Harry followed him in, unsure of what was expected of him. “The pavilion.”

Voldemort had glanced in a mirror to scrub his face with one hand, and frowned at Harry’s reflection. “Were you stopped?”

Should he tell Voldemort? He had no convincing lies left, nor had he expected his time away to cause Voldemort so much consternation, but he had some premonition he’d be in trouble for the girl’s escape. “Fatima was there, alone. She wanted the… collar” – he would never not choke on that word – “and she found a way to take it off.”

Voldemort motioned Harry to the bed; Harry gratefully grabbed a blanket since he’d let the warming spell lapse. “And then she used the magic of it to Apparate,” he muttered, pre-emptively wincing at Voldemort’s reaction.

A moment’s silence. “Ah. She did seem resourceful.”

“What, that’s it?”

“Wadha will be upset that she lost her leverage,” Voldemort said indifferently. “For what, I don’t know. The Palestinians aren’t generally in a position to trade resources. That may be why the girl remained here as long as she did, actually, that her community couldn’t afford to bargain her return.”

“I don’t know where she went,” Harry said. “What if it’s somewhere unsafe? Or what if there wasn’t enough magic, and she gets Splinched? Or what if Wadha attacks her family or something?”

Voldemort sighed, clearly thinking all of these to be idle worries. “She is probably safe. You probably couldn’t have prohibited her escape, and you certainly can’t ensure her safety now. Let it go.”

“But she’s so young – “

“So are you,” Voldemort snapped.

That hurt, and dredged up the insecurities he had felt being excluded from Voldemort’s politicking conversations. Voldemort either saw or felt his emotions (horrifyingly) and continued, “It’s not even that you want to meddle with politics; it’s that you’d be meddling with politics that _don’t matter to you_. Instead, why were you in touch with Snape?”

Voldemort had dimmed the lights, making it even more difficult to read his emotions along with his tone. But Harry tried, “I asked him about Scrimgeour, like you said.”

“And?”

“He didn’t tell me. He said to choose my loyalties, that’s all.” Let’s leave out the detail of _someone_ knowing they’d been at Hogwarts.

“ _Snape_ said that,” Voldemort deadpanned, and Harry terrifyingly wondered how much Voldemort already knew of Snape’s allegiances. “But that’s not actually useful.”

“No,” Harry agreed.

“ _Harry_.” He hated that tone. “I didn’t… linger at that memory, as it wasn’t significant at the moment, but I recognized that something happened. _What_? And furthermore, what are you protecting?” When Harry hesitated, Voldemort narrowed his eyes: “Shall I hold you down and Legilimency it from you instead?”

It was an idle threat, or so Harry thought, until Voldemort actually conjured chains around his wrists that ran to the headboard. “It’s your decision.”

Harry’s mind was a dangerous place for Voldemort to be, with everything he’d been mulling over. But Voldemort was going to get the worst of it, that someone knew of their presence at Hogwarts. And he… really needed to indulge this tension and see where this was heading. He tugged at the chains until they retracted, sprawling his body along the bed with his wrists pressed against the headboard, and looked up at Voldemort. “You could try.”

Voldemort was supposed to lean over and murmur something threatening and arousing – instead, he only laughed. “You kinky prat.” But he did lean over Harry, as though proximity would help the Legilimency along. (Though… it might, since it certainly made concentration or resolve no easier.) And then he felt the foreign press of Legilimency and saw Snape’s patronus before him in his memory. Voldemort ran through a range of emotions – curiosity, distaste, distrust, nostalgia, surprise, dread, and some Harry didn’t recognize before they vanished – all very quickly, which Harry felt, and _that_ is what did him in. Just feeling Voldemort’s… humanity was unnerving. “Stop,” he muttered, trying to pull himself up with the chains. “This was stupid.”

Voldemort had already learned what he’d needed to, though, and Harry felt him withdraw. They just looked at each other for a minute, and then Voldemort said, “You’re wrong.”

“I’m _wrong_?” Of all the possible reactions he’d anticipated, this wasn’t among them.

“They weren’t interested in _you_. Whoever is staking out Hogwarts – I am wanted, and you’re strategically obsolete.”

“If I were, you wouldn’t care if the Ministry got a hold of my memories, would you?” Harry snapped.

Voldemort ducked his head in acquiescence – probably just to appease him, but whatever. “Will you return tomorrow?” he asked. “To begin restoration, collect samples of the charms….” He trailed off, considering. “If you encounter this group, engage them how you see fit, I suppose. Don’t get caught.”

“Tomorrow?” Harry repeated.

“Later today, technically.”

Right. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Voldemort took this as agreement – for whatever reason, Harry had no idea – and settled deeper into bed. “Are you staying?”

It would have been an obscure question if Harry hadn’t felt him reach over and rest a hand on the chains holding him to the headboard. _God_. Before Voldemort could feel his breath and heartbeat increase, as a result of the proximity and arousal and ambivalence, he shook his head. “Let me up.”

“Really?” Voldemort sounded surprised, which further twisted Harry’s stomach into knots. He pushed the chains off Harry’s wrists, brushing a thumb over each of them where the shackles had been.

The darkness did him in, the unreality of just being able to feel everything about Voldemort’s presence. He was hard and it was humiliating. This wasn’t a stupid sex magic game or indulgent emotional manipulation by Voldemort, it was all him and it was wrong. “Yes,” Harry said as he scrambled out of bed. “Goodnight.” He retreated to his own room before Voldemort could do him in any further.

It was the worst wank he’d ever had, lying on his back in the bed and unsettled as hell, but he needed a wank nonetheless. Things would seem better in the nearing light of day.

 

He woke up late in the morning to silence. Fine, he should be preparing for Hogwarts – whatever ‘preparation’ might even mean – before Voldemort sent him on his way. After getting ready, he settled into Voldemort’s library.

Voldemort never had taught him the runes he’d used to channel magic toward Ko. And Harry had never touched runes before in his life. Even so, he’d learn; he grabbed a runes book and flipped to its introduction.

It wasn’t until around one in the afternoon that Voldemort returned. And he didn’t come find Harry – Harry wasn’t sure Voldemort knew he was in here – but by the sound it settled into the living room, working on something.

It became a really awful dynamic, as Harry found himself working more quietly as though he didn’t want to be found out. He marked his place in the book: he’d been able to draw runes that shimmered and chilled the air and made it freeze into icy drops, but nothing that would be sufficiently talented for what Voldemort wanted of him. Before the silence could work up his anxiety any further, he went out.

Voldemort was on one of the couches, the Panopticon resting on an ottoman before him. He flipped through it with one hand while taking notes with the other. “Good afternoon,” he said without looking up as Harry approached.

“Hi.” He had a seat across from Voldemort. “I’m not ready.”

“Of course not.” Voldemort took off his reading glasses to size Harry up. “But that won’t keep you from going?”

The inquisitive lilt at the end was unexpected; just like all the other times Voldemort had pulled him into affirming decisions that were actually made under duress. Or… less-than-pure motives. “What if it does?” he said, not realizing he would ask until the words had already left his mouth.

That gave Voldemort pause. “You _begged_ to be involved with the restoration yesterday,” he said slowly, “and your emotional ties make you a compelling subject for this work. And Harry… I _can’t_.”

God, Harry thought he would’ve recovered from last night’s unnerving intimacy, but he most certainly had not. He so much wanted a resolution, he was about to do something very stupid. “I’ll go,” he told Voldemort, “if you’ll kiss me.”

Voldemort shrugged. “Fine, come here.”

That wasn’t how things were supposed to go. They were supposed to have a bitter confrontation about _feelings_ in which Harry could shout at him for likely emotional abuse. He stood but didn’t move. “Really?”

“Shall I get you off too, then?” Voldemort asked. “Or perhaps an IOU, that if you come back successful I’ll fuck you?”

He was frozen in place, trying to formulate a response, when he felt Legilimency touch the back of his thoughts. Then a moment later: “Oh, Harry,” Voldemort sighed. “You should know that sex magic has… side effects. So you may be queer regardless, but this is all, mm, heightened.”

“I’m not queer.” He sat back down, not wanting to kiss Voldemort anymore since he’d apparently been betrayed by his own body. Fuck.

“Of course,” Voldemort agreed. “Then may I teach you a few spells for Hogwarts?”

This not-confrontation wasn’t going to become any more fruitful. “Yeah.”

They went through the boring spell (which Voldemort didn’t think would work until he’d restored something of Hogwarts first), some concentration and strength enhancements, a way to sample magics in the air and collect it all in soft marble-sized orbs, and _finally_ a verbalized spell for magic restoration. “Ba-kash-ti o-tem,” Voldemort enunciated. At Harry’s look, he added, “A non-Western spell. As such, it’s meant as a mantra, not the single incantation you’ve learned up to this point. Concentrate on it, pronounce it aloud if it’s safe. It’ll strengthen what you’ve already been able to do on your own.”

“Bakashi otem,” Harry repeated. “Do I need my wand?”

“It may help. And here, you’ll need to learn the runes….” Voldemort ripped a sheet of paper out of his notepad. “It’d be easier for you to construct these in the sand, not in the air as I did last night.” He sketched a vertical line of a dozen runes down the page, handing it to Harry. “Practice those.”

“And I’ll just… draw them in the dirt?”

“Yes. Take that with you” – Voldemort pointed to the sketch – “to copy. Do it right off. Draw it immediately outside the barrier, perpendicular, do you understand? It’ll focus your magic to a point.” He chewed his thin lips as he studied Harry. “That should suffice. You’ll leave at nightfall. Continue working on them; I’ll make dinner.” He left Harry alone.

He was emotionally exhausted right now, too much to be anxious anymore. So in between sketching out the runes, he practiced gathering magic into his palms and dispersing it idly.

And when he’d had enough, he stacked Voldemort’s textbooks, slipped the runes into his pocket, and entered the kitchen. “Can I help?”

Voldemort nodded to a bowl with tomato and zucchini. “Chop those.” He was preparing a beef flank. “And have a glass of wine.”

If nothing else, he and Voldemort _had_ become great drinking buddies over the past few weeks. It’d settle his nerves, in any case. “What are you expecting?”

Voldemort glanced over his shoulder. “Tonight? You’ll accomplish _something_ , at least.”

“And what if I don’t?” he pressed. “What if I just end up there like a prat? Or I make it worse?”

“Then come home. Come back,” Voldemort corrected. “This is… guesswork, honestly; I wasn’t present long enough to fully assess the brand of magic.” He was speaking carefully, as though Harry were particularly fragile. “If nothing is effective, that in itself will be useful to know.” He began on a marinade. “Thank you for going.”

“Um, sure.”

He marinated the beef and rinsed his hands. “Here,” he said. “Let me have your wand.”

“No. Why?”

“Fortification, temporary enhancements. It will help.”

Wiping his hands on a towel, Harry fished it from his pocket. “Be careful with it.”

“Mm.” Voldemort spun it through his fingers. “I always forget that they have complementary cores. I don’t know that I can even perform a spell on it….” With his own wand, he drew a golden ribbon around it, that dissolved into the wood. “Ah. Good.”

What was different about his interaction with Voldemort today, Harry thought, was how unnervingly _respectful_ he was being. Certainly Harry wanted Hogwarts restored at least as much as Voldemort did. Or, if he felt guilty for dragging Harry into this horrible sex magic and Stockholm syndrome – and he _should_ – then Harry would really rather he make up for it by forgetting all about it. In any case, Voldemort’s unprecedented even-temperedness was, if anything, exacerbating his nerves.

Voldemort performed another two spells, one with a shimmering white light and the other a shower of sparks, before handing the wand back. “The spells remain for forty-eight hours. Be careful if you decide to curse anyone.”

“Right, I will.” He sliced a lemon for the salad.

“And please be confident.”

It was said so off-handedly – so unlike Voldemort – that the kindness of it didn’t register with Harry for a few moments. “I will.”

They ate quietly; it’d been a difficult day and was about to get moreso. Then Voldemort made him two Portkeys. “You really do need to learn Apparition,” he said as he handed Harry a quill and a silver potions spoon. “I’ll activate the first one, the quill, when we’re at the edge of camp. The second – you’ve seen how to use them, yes? It’s a ripping motion combined with any unlocking spell.”

“That’s it?” Voldemort nodded and Harry tucked away the silver spoon. They left in silence.

It was chilly out, and Harry threw a warming spell over them both. And so quiet, so ominous. When Voldemort motioned to Harry that they’d come far enough, he handed Voldemort the Portkey to activate.

“And – “ Voldemort took one of his wrists, pulling him close, facing one another – “I recognize that you don’t actually _want_ this, but… it will help.” He ducked his head to kiss Harry.

Again the darkness heightened everything: his awareness of Voldemort’s physicality, the heat between them, and the soft breathing, and the way Harry wanted to pull in closer to press their bodies together. The kiss was dry and chaste, relatively, but it still burned with scandal. For just a moment, he let go, of the doubts and self-hatred he’d felt surrounding these inclinations, and just let Voldemort kiss him.

When Voldemort pulled back, it was only far enough that their lips were still touching. “Good luck,” he said, and Harry felt him mouth it instead. Then he stepped back, turning to go just before the Portkey pulled Harry away.

 


	3. Chapter 3

He arrived into pitch black. It could have been anywhere or nowhere; he hadn’t thought to ask Voldemort how he was supposed to figure that out. He cast Lumos, detaching it as a floating orb alongside him, to illuminate a circle perhaps forty feet across. It rather defeated the purpose of coming under the cover of darkness, but at least he could move with purpose. He shot long-reaching sparks in every direction, and the area where they’d seemed to dissipate abruptly, he approached.

At the spot where his wand became a stick, he scuffed a line in the dirt, demarcating the boundary of the magical obliteration, before pulling out his cheat sheet of runes. He felt fairly stupid, kneeling in the dirt to doodle with his wand, but even as he drew he felt the energy of the air shift above each symbol.

When the runes were completed, he cast on himself the concentration spells Voldemort had given him. Then there was nothing to do but restore Hogwarts.

“Bakashi otem,” he muttered, unsure of himself. He let his wand dangle between two fingers as he spread his hands and closed his eyes. Redistribution of magic, drawing it out of the air in order to fix this. His hands grew heavy as he chanted the mantra.

It felt easier, really; the magic came to him and solidified in his hands more quickly, giving him some confidence that he could do this. _He could do this_. He lost track of time, honestly, and pretty much every sensation but the magic that he held. When it seemed impossibly heavy, he let it go at a dribble, into the channel carved into the space between him and Hogwarts.

He didn’t want to open his eyes before he was done; he didn’t want to see if it hadn’t worked. And he didn’t push, but let go, gently, deliberately.

When his hands were empty once more, he opened his eyes – and saw a pearly, translucent barrier in front of him, with stones behind it that he could barely make out but knew, wonderfully, to be the exterior walls of Hogwarts. He could cry.

The boring spell came next. He could only see a few feet of the barrier before him, but if he could make a breach big enough to get through, that was all he needed. He shot the corkscrew spell at the barrier, and it landed with a satisfying _crack_!

“Stop!” someone shouted from the distance. Before he could react, he was caught in a glowing net that seemed to force both magic and consciousness out of him. He barely felt the Apparation.

 

“Harry, wake up, we need you,” a familiar voice said over him insistently.

He was disoriented as hell, his head swimming and everything a bit warped. “What?” he muttered.

“You can stay there,” a second familiar voice said. “But do you remember what you were doing?”

This would be the group monitoring Hogwarts, then. He needed to know – he tried to drag a hand across his eyes but found his hands immobilized.

“Sorry,” the first woman said. “Here.” She must’ve conjured a damp cloth, because something warm and wet was dragged across his face. “Open your eyes.”

He did, and his vision was filled with long red hair and freckles – _Ginny_ , even if his vision wouldn’t focus yet. And the second voice had been Hermione, he could place their voices now, even over the distorted pounding in his ears. He blinked a few times, glancing up to find his hands tied over his head to a headboard ( _God, as usual_ ) before he looked to both of them. Ginny’s face was scratched up, and Hermione had given herself a buzz cut recently – she had always been very practical – and it was so, so good to see them. The room was purposefully nondescript, and since he was immobilized on his back, he couldn’t even particularly see much of it. “Hi,” he said tentatively. “Uh, let me up?”

Ginny shook her head. “We need to know what you were doing,” she told him. “Then we’ll let you up.” She smiled grimly. “I feel awful, so as soon as – “

“Was it _you_ who did this to Hogwarts?” he asked incredulously.

“ _Harry_.” Her voice was brisk. “Tell us what you were doing. Enough to know you weren’t possessed, because that’s how it looked.”

_Possessed_? Merlin. “Of course not. I was going to restore Hogwarts. I’d found the barrier, and was just about to crack it when you… whatever you did. What _did_ you do?” he added.

“We’d been keeping watch of the grounds. We thought it might lure you back,” Ginny said with something like a wry smile. She motioned to Hermione, who undid the charms that bound his hands.

He was impossibly stiff, and reached for his wand to charm the kinks out of his neck and back. “So, what happened to Hogwarts? Sometime in the past week, it just… disappeared.”

Ginny raised her eyebrows. “Well, so did you.”

Hermione leaned in, apparently willing to offer up answers before they pursued that obvious line of questioning. “It was us,” she said. “Or rather, the Order. You didn’t see what it was like, at the end. The castle was just too appealing a target; it would’ve been destroyed if we hadn’t done something.”

“And it’s just… hidden?”

“Hidden within a forcefield that blocks magic,” she affirmed. Then she gave him a curious look. “How did you _do_ that? How did you even know what to do? You never even took Runes….”

He fished for some appropriate half-truth. “I… don’t want to explain everything more than once,” he attempted (hoping it would buy him enough time). “Just, what’s happened so far?”

She ducked her head in acquiescence (though Harry took note of Ginny’s pursed lips at his evasion). “We also though it would attract you, if you knew,” Hermione continued, handing him a glass of something clear and fizzy. “Right?” she said with a small smile. “So we’ve kept watch in shifts. You were there once before, weren’t you? Our sensors had been tripped.”

“You weren’t there?” If they’d seen him saving Voldemort, he wouldn’t know what he could possibly say to make that okay.

“No. That was Moody’s watch technically, but we were….” She trailed off, a pained look crossing her face.

“You don’t know about Snape,” Ginny picked up. “We found out that he’d been assisting Voldemort with… whatever Voldemort is doing. And the Order decided – we were in a meeting then – not that we’d trusted him much before – but that he needed to be neutralized.”

“What does that mean?” Harry asked. He swung his legs out of bed, sitting up as though ready for action.

“We – _I_ ,” Hermione corrected herself, “put him in an unconscious state, before moving him to a safe house. It was a potion administered by injection…. We cornered him.” She scrubbed her face with her hands, muttering through her fingers, “Harry, I feel _awful_.”

“Don’t, you’ve kept us all safe,” Ginny offered, in a way that suggested they’d had this conversation several times before. She turned back to Harry. “He was captured last night. Nobody has decided what to do with him yet.”

So they had been about to close in on Snape the same time that Snape had sent his warning to Harry. Bloody hell. “I need to see him.”

Both women hesitated. “The only person who knows where he is is Remus,” Ginny said. “It’s simpler that way.”

“So take me to Remus,” Harry insisted. “I’ve been tracking Voldemort, so I need to see Snape. To compare intel.” It wasn’t too much of a lie.

Ginny’s eyes widened. “Alone? Harry, we’ll go with you, wherever you’re going to find him.”

“Just let me see Snape.”

 

They brought him back to the Black home, where the Order was generally congregated these days. He got many hugs and gave many cryptic explanations for where he’d been. Everyone was okay, _thank god, thank god, thank god_.

“On Wednesday we went to the Ministry,” Ron was narrating. “Malfoy’s been trying to install Death Eaters to the interim Minister’s cabinet. Since Scrimgeour’s missing.”

Harry wasn’t supposed to know that. “He is?”

“We don’t know what happened to him,” Ron said.

“Captured,” Moody said confidently. “Look at how quickly the Death Eaters took advantage, of course it was them. If anything, it’s only surprising they haven’t _announced_ it.” A breath sucked through his teeth. “Or released the body.”

Harry’s stomach clenched. “He’s dead, then.”

Tonks looked at him. “They’ve never been the type to take prisoners. Of course.” She glanced over at Moody. “You’ve tracked the Minister’s location, yeah?”

Moody nodded. “We cracked their tracking device. There’s nothing on it.”

Well, damn. They were all around the dining room table, trading Harry a debriefing in exchange for hints of what he’d been doing. They had been unceasing, but the battle had apparently devolved into scattered encounters, with no end to the means. It just all felt wrong, and not the way to achieve any sort of peace. But _how_?

Harry was fortunate that he’d been caught fairly late in the night, because he didn’t have to face such an awful (justified) amount of scrutiny before people excused themselves back to bed. And when the room had emptied, Remus motioned to Harry. “You need to see Snape.”

“I do, yeah. Where is he?”

“I’ll take you. Bring a coat.”

They left Grimmauld Place, walking winding cobblestone streets dusted in light snow until they came to a condemned home. “You’re keeping him just around the corner?” Harry asked incredulously.

“No, there’s a portal….” Remus paused to jimmy the lock. “He’s _extremely_ out of the way.” He let them both in. “Go through the foyer on your left.”

There he found a dusty parlor, with settings for tea. As he stepped in closer, he saw that the teapot was full and steaming – being kept warm with a charm, for who knows how long.

“Unsettling, isn’t it.” Remus came up behind him. “But it’s our portal. Let me go first, excuse me.” He touched a finger to the ceramic and – _poof_ , he vanished. Unnerving, and yet Harry followed suit.

And found himself in yet another pitch-black outdoor space. Beside him, Remus shone a tiny light, just enough to check that he’d made it. “Good,” he said. “This is the edge of a werewolf den, you should know, but it’s only a crescent moon tonight. So you’re quite safe.”

“Is Snape?”

There wasn’t enough light to read Remus’s expression, but the momentary silence said enough. “He’s locked well enough away. Here, this way.” Remus steered him through a forest and into a small clearing. Before them stood an oak tree with a vertical split; Remus nudged it open with his wand.

It was bigger on the inside, of course. They descended a short flight of stairs, through a set of semi-circular doors, and… god, it was Snape and he looked awful. He was unconscious, his body somewhat strewn into a hammock, and his face fairly bloodied.

“Vitals before we wake him,” Remus murmured, throwing some diagnostic spells at him and nodding at the numbers they produced. He conjured two ottomans, putting both of them at eye level with Snape. And then he cast a revitalization spell.

When it hit, Snape bolted upright, panicked and desperate, apparently still full of the adrenaline from being cornered and captured. Remus pitched forward to grab the edge of the hammock, steadying it quickly. “Severus,” he said softly. “Sev, hey. Are you alright?”

With a shudder, Snape fought to compose himself, his chest still heaving as he took in his surroundings before focusing on Remus. “No,” he said, but his voice was shaky. “ _No_ ,” he said again, more forcefully. “What the hell did you do – !”

“Ehrlich’s draught,” Remus said, and Snape’s face contorted in fury. “The Order was worried that you’d compromised our security,” Remus explained. “And they just… needed you neutralized for a bit.”

“And you let that happen?” Snape tried standing, apparently finding being seated in a hammock an ignominious position from which to have a fight, but his limbs didn’t seem to work yet. Remus caught him, calmly re-placing him.

“No, I didn’t. But I couldn’t dissuade them, either. I’m sorry.” Remus took a breath. “This is temporary, in any case, until we know more about Voldemort’s movement.”

“Ask Potter,” Snape said, with barely a glance to acknowledge he was even here (as Harry was _not_ seated on an ottoman in the vicinity of Snape’s wrath, but pressed against a far wall as though he wanted to become one with it). “And if you’re concerned about _compromised security_ – “

“We have. We will.” Remus put a hand on Snape’s knee, and for some reason that calmed him rather than infuriated him. “But, would you eat first?” Pulling a thermos and loaf of bread from his bag, he offered them. “My pumpkin stew. And Molly made the bread.”

“No,” he snapped. Then, seeing something in Remus’s face, he gruffly added, “Thank you.”

“This place isn’t a long-term solution,” Remus said, conjuring a sideboard with a warming spell for the food. “But for now…. Can I do anything for you?”

Snape pursed his lips. “To begin with, I need you to get the boy out of here. Why would you even bring _Potter_ here, of all people.”

Harry had been so quiet and so good up to this point, this wasn’t fair. He peeled himself off the far wall, stepping forward reluctantly. “I asked him to. I need to trade intel with you, about Voldemort.” (Hey, it was a not-lie that had worked on Hermione and Ginny, so.)

Snape made eye contact with him briefly in what looked like understanding, at least he thought so? Then he returned his attention to Remus. “And _who_ exactly was worried that I was a breach?”

Remus sighed, lowering himself and Harry onto the ottomans as though that’d make the conversation less contentious. “I told them – we’re frightened, all of us, and the wizarding world is so fragmented right now that complicated allegiances are… volatile. Moody had information he felt he had to act on. May I ask…?” Remus inclined his head.

“You may not, not here and now,” Snape said. “Leave me with Potter to discuss things, and then….”

Remus nodded, excusing himself. And then Harry and Snape looked at each other for a few long moments. “Thank you for the Patronus,” Harry began, unsure of himself.

“What are – no, stand up and give me your wand.” Harry did this with significantly less argument than he really should have. Taking it, Snape cast a searching spell that Harry didn’t quite recognize, and hissed air through his teeth at whatever he learned. Getting up (steadily, this time) he soundproofed a crevice in the wall, tucking Harry’s wand into it.

“What are you _doing_?”

“You were bugged. Nothing on your person, but your wand had some kind of tracking on it. By the Dark Lord, of course.” Snape thought, chewing his chapped lips. “I recognize his magic, but perhaps telling him you thought the Order… no, don’t tell him about the Order. Don’t tell him anything. Just know that your wand is _compromised_.” He enunciated in a prickly way that made clear what he thought of the Order’s same accusation of himself.

“Um, thanks.”

Snape didn’t acknowledge this. His motions were tense, and his tone was clipped, obviously feeling as ambivalent about their necessary collaboration as Harry did. “What are you doing here?” He gave him an exasperated look. “Don’t say that you’ve _escaped_.”

“I was trying to restore Hogwarts. To find out what happened. And because Voldemort wanted me to,” Harry added, at Snape’s skeptical look. “But Hermione and Ginny, uh, found me there. I told them I’ve been tracking Voldemort.”

“And what are you doing for him?”

“Like, for real, or what did I tell them?”

This question infuriated Snape for reasons he didn’t quite understand. He said, with apparently Herculean patience, “What are you _truly_ doing for him, that has kept you in his presence and kept you both untrackable for the past two weeks?”

“Well, Voldemort was working on that potion. Now, I was supposed to find out who vanished Hogwarts, and why, so,” Harry made a vague motion. “Oh, and he also wants me to get rid of Scrimgeour.”

Snape raised his eyebrows at this. “Scrimgeour was _mine_.”

“Well, you didn’t tell me anything when I sent you a Patronus to ask,” Harry replied, defensive. “He wants Scrimgeour permanently neutralized, and he said I should do it. If it’d keep him from killing Scrimgeour otherwise.” He didn’t add that Voldemort thought Snape didn’t _deserve_ Scrimgeour, whatever the hell that meant.

Snape had dropped his head, thinking. “Then you need to attempt to capture Scrimgeour – or whatever you want to do – show some indiscretion, and then I need to kill him.”

Harry could’ve gagged at how blasé he sounded. “ _No_.”

Snape grimaced. “What are you, a loyalist? Anything that puts more contrast or opposition between our actions will be grounds for… consequences.”

“Right.” He frowned. “Why haven’t you given him to the Order? If you still know where he is. It’d, y’know, make them trust you again.”

Snape made another obvious gesture at controlling his exasperation. “Why, I hadn’t thought of that.” His tone was venomous. “While I don’t need to justify myself to you… erring on the side of satisfying the Dark Lord is always the safer option. _Obviously_.”

That was obvious, now that he heard it, and he felt exactly as stupid as Snape had meant to make him feel. “Right,” he muttered again. “But, then how do I get you out of here?” Because seeing Snape this powerless was wrong, and because he had some feeling that the doubt cast on him was his fault, and because somehow, horrifically, Snape was the closest thing to a mentor or ally in his life right now. _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

Snape’s eyebrows shot up, surprised but marginally softened. “Why would you feel that responsibility?” His tone was at least half-sincere. “To say nothing of your own credibility with the Order….”

Harry shrugged. He didn’t want to have a _referendum_ on their _relationship_ , sod it, he just wanted to help. “It’s just right,” he said. “What would be enough to get you back in with the Order?”

Snape shook his head. “I don’t know what they believe they know.”

“I’ll find out,” Harry promised. “Unless Remus knows enough already. But you… thank you.”

Snape only gave a short nod, perhaps more uncomfortable now than at any confrontation they’d ever had.

“Where would you go?” Harry continued. “If the Order doesn’t… believe you.”

Snape looked at him skeptically. “ _You_ need to stay in with the Order, under any circumstances.”

“I wasn’t asking about me, I was asking about _you_ ,” Harry snapped.

“Of course.” Snape leaned forward. “You have gotten yourself into a very stupid position, Potter. Because now Voldemort will never let you go.”

The blunt reality of this made Harry’s heart skip a beat. “Then I don’t know what to do,” he said, his voice more forced than he wanted it to be.

“I’ll think on it,” Snape offered, resigned but not without something like compassion. “You need to stay with the Weasleys a while longer. It will… restore your perspective.”

“And you? I can’t let you stay here.”

“Get Lupin. Leave your wand, and tell him he needs to break the tracking spell simultaneously with the disarming spell.”

“But he’ll know how much Voldemort has already heard.”

Snape looked at him in disbelief. “ _That’s_ not what should worry you.”

“Fine, he’ll know I’m working with Voldemort. Should _that_ worry me?”

“Immensely,” Snape deadpanned. “Send Lupin in anyway and tell him about the charms.”

Harry got up shakily, feeling trapped into trusting that Snape would – or even _could_ – act in his best interests. He found Remus in the hall, sitting on a flight of stairs and reading a book. “Remus?”

He looked up. “Okay?”

“Kind of. Snape’s got my wand, you need to disarm him and break the tracking charm on it. Snape will explain afterward,” Harry hastened to add at Remus’ (understandably) alarmed look. He gave Remus a wide berth as he strode inside purposefully; and then he had nothing to do but pace the hall.

The room wasn’t soundproofed, serendipitously. “Severus, what – “ Remus’s voice was cut off by a few minor explosions, and then silence. Snape’s voice in too low a volume to be heard, and then Remus’s strangled, “So he _knows_?” More silence.

Harry had edged closer and closer to the door, until he was able to hear Snape tell Lupin, “He needs to be aligned with the Order…. _Everyone_ is worse off if….”

Remus answered in an unusually loud and pointed tone, “You’d wish perpetual suspicion on him as well? Both of you – I can’t – “

Snape, matching his tone: “You don’t have to do anything for me.”

“Of course I do.” Another long silence.

Harry had, by this time, simply stopped before the door. He thought he was fine until he heard Snape sigh, “The door wasn’t soundproofed.” Raising his voice: “ _Come in, Potter_.”

He might as well. He tried to not look too guilty as he entered. “Sorry.”

Remus and Snape were both seated in the hammock, close enough that their thighs pressed against each other; at least until Remus, looking self-conscious, stepped down. He extended Harry’s wand: “Fixed it.” And then, surprising them both, he gathered Harry in a strong, sad hug. “What _have_ you gotten yourself into?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said into his shoulder, returning the hug. “But I’ll be alright.” He drew back. “But the Order…?”

Remus shook his head slowly. “We haven’t exactly shared anything confidential with you tonight, have we? Nothing he wouldn’t already know. Whatever you’ve said to Severus is probably more of a risk than anything you’ve heard from the Order.”

Right. Fuck. He looked to Snape, who shrugged him off. “It’s impossible to know what he heard, or thought he heard. Nothing we can pre-empt, certainly.”

A feeling of resignation settled, and silence followed. At least, until Harry thought to ask: “Can you tell me more about the Magical Obliteration?”

Looking surprised, Remus cocked his head a fraction. “Why?”

“Voldemort won’t go near it, is why. It could keep all safer. Could you seal up headquarters but still get in and out? Maybe – “ He was so certain about this now “ – maybe even just as a… shell, so it looks like Obliteration from the outside but you can still use magic indoors.”

Snape looked at him. “Why won’t the Dark Lord approach it?”

Oh god, this would make him a traitor, but… Voldemort seemed to matter so much less to him here. “He can’t be in non-magical spaces. He’s, uh, made up of too much magic, so it makes him really weak. He passed out when he crossed onto Hogwarts grounds.”

Remus stared. “Passed out? And we weren’t _there_?”

“Yesterday morning,” Harry confirmed.

“And you _saved_ him?” Snape asked, deadpan.

Harry turned to Snape. “I did, yeah.” He saw this decision in a different light now that he was here. “But you can’t… don’t talk to me like that when _you’ve_ been working on his bloody immortality potion.”

“Idiot,” Snape snarled (and like that, their temporary alliance disintegrated.) Getting to his feet, he drew himself to his full height. “If you had _any_ idea what I’ve risked – not that you wouldn’t run back to him and get me killed in exchange for a fuck.”

The staccato stopped all three of them, seemed to freeze the space of the room itself. Remus squeezed his eyes shut. “Apologize, please.”

“He hasn’t got to,” Harry said shortly. Was he _allowed_ to feel betrayed by Snape? “Just, let me go home.”

Remus nodded, motioning him toward the door. “I’ll be just a minute,” he said, letting Harry out before closing the door on him again. This time they were certain to put up soundproof barriers, so Harry was stuck in a silent hall, trembling with anger and fear.

Remus emerged a short time later, looking ashen and thin-lipped. Still, he approached Harry with deliberate civility. “Let’s go.”

As they walked through the pitch forest, Remus asked softly, “Where are your loyalties, really? If they’re not here… I can’t take you back. You understand.”

“They’re here,” Harry promised. “I want the fighting to stop, I want people to stop dying. I’ve just… gotten myself into a complicated position.”

“We’ll have to kill Voldemort,” Remus continued. “It seems most likely that _you’ll_ have to kill Voldemort. Can you do that?”

God, what else could he say? “I can.”

“And sometime soon, the rest of the Order will need to know.”

That part sounded more horrible to him than even killing Voldemort. For them to have any idea how cozy and how… selfish (he kept trying to find other words, but nothing felt as apt) he had been while they fought. But he murmured an agreement, and Remus seemed to relax marginally.

They came to a jagged stone structure. “This is the other end of the portal. You can find your way home?” Remus asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’m staying with Severus awhile longer. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Harry nodded and reached out to touch the portal; it sucked him away instantly.

It felt like an impossibly long walk back to Grimmauld Place, but the stillness of the night somehow calmed his nerves. Letting himself in, he climbed the stairs to Ginny’s room.

From his wand he let fall a shower of white sparks that swirled underneath her door; it had been their mutual signal all summer. He waited a few moments, the door was pushed open just enough to let him in, and Ginny was there, stupidly beautiful in a tank top and shorts. “Hi,” she murmured.

They closed the door behind themselves, put up soundproofing charms, and were finally able to speak alone and freely. “Were you just out?” she asked, sitting cross-legged on her bed. “You’re cold.” She rubbed his hands between hers briskly, playfully.

“Yeah.” He was seated across from her, her legs also crossed so their knees were touching. He gazed for a long time at her: her hair was in a thick braid, her shorts revealed freckles all the way up her legs, and she looked… soft. Approachable. He reached for the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head, and did the same with his own. He pressed their chests together, warm skin on skin, and just lay there in the dark.

“Some days I wondered if you were dead,” Ginny said, after a time, her tone deliberately casual. “If you’d martyred yourself to kill Voldemort.” She gave him a wry smile. “You know, because you seem like the type.”

“I do, don’t I.” He began unbraiding her hair, letting it fall in loose waves over her back. “But no, Voldemort is alive and well.”

“There’s just….” She paused to think. “There’s so little _left_ , I guess, that’s worth fighting for or putting back together, except ourselves.”

It felt amazing to have this sort of intimacy be normal, not strained or oppositional like it would always be with Voldemort. He untied the drawstring of her shorts and she lifted herself on an elbow to shimmy them off. No knickers; he ran his hand down the curve of her hip. “ _Ourselves_ still sounds like a pretty big deal, Gin.” He shifted his hips so she could reach for his fly. “You’ve been so strong and so good. I’m sorry I haven’t been here with you.” He let her tug his jeans off.

Ginny slipped a hand into the waistband of his boxers. “ _You’ve_ been strong,” she said. “All by yourself. You deserve a break.”

No, he really didn’t, but he needed it. He ducked his head, kissing her between her soft, perfect breasts. “You too.” Turning around, he nibbled and kissed his way down her body as she massaged his cock through his boxers. He nudged her legs apart as he reached her pubic hair, and she rolled over slightly, pulling his lower half onto her face, slipping his erection between her lips.

She was so sweet, so soft, so… simple. He tongued her cunt decadently, appreciatively. Ginny hummed happily at what Harry did to her, and the reverberations of her mouth shot straight up his spine.

He had his eyes closed and one hand resting on each of Ginny’s thighs when she withdrew her mouth. “Can I fuck you tonight?” she said, a lilt in her voice as she drew her knees up and away from him.

“’Course.” He rolled off her carefully, onto his back, as she climbed on top of him. Their positioning was inexpert; he shifted his pelvis and her fingers teased his cock as she guided it into herself.

Their sex was a slow and gentle grinding, an appreciation for one another’s presence and pleasure. Ginny’s hair brushed his face, casting the whole scene in a warm red hue. He sucked his fingers and then stroked her clit on each thrust, and he could anticipate her orgasm by the tautness of the muscles in her back. “I love you,” he murmured into her ear as, squeezing her eyes shut, she came. Her pussy contracted and she jerked against his cock wonderfully, and it was in the soft afterglow of her getting off – _because_ she got off – that he arched himself into her hot, wet, perfect cunt and shot his load.

No hurry to move any further than withdrawing and slumping into the blankets together. After a time, Ginny glanced up at him and laughed gently. “So, I missed you.”

It was stupid, but he smiled anyway.

 

But of course he _would_ wake up wetting the bed the next morning. Not wet, but wetting present tense, as his naked penis peed softly up his belly. He stopped himself, horrified, but then glanced over at Ginny. She’d never know. Keeping himself from getting hard – how could he, this was depraved – he tugged his boxers on, emptying the rest of his piss into them. He soaked himself; it ran down his hips, under his arse, creating a puddle in the sheets. He smelled like piss and felt like a child.

As he reached for his wand to clean up, that idea hit the wrong part of his brain, the part still consumed with nappies and pampering and humiliation ( _and Voldemort_ , he didn’t let himself think). It would be stupid to have a wank, right, with his girlfriend right next to him. But after cleaning up, he headed to the shower for precisely that.

But as he was stepping out of the shower, wrapped in a thick towel, his scar _throbbed_ , making his vision swim. He swayed, barely grabbing the counter to slow his drop to the floor. He couldn’t make out the emotion or the circumstances, and while he tried to squeeze his eyes shut for concentration, everything just hurt too much. Nor did it subside. He stayed on the bathroom floor, his face clutched in his hands, until somebody knocked.

“Harry?” Ron’s voice was uncertain. “In there?”

He opened his mouth but only a strangled gasp escaped.

“Oh my god,” Hermione said. He heard a wand jammed into the keyhole, then both of them were on the floor beside him. “What, what is it,” Ron asked, his wand clenched in his grip. But it was Hermione who cast something that cut through the white-hot pain temporarily.

“It’s Voldemort – my scar – “ Harry muttered. “Is there anyone at Hogwarts?”

“No, we didn’t…. Moody!” Hermione shouted toward the hall, scrambling to her feet and sprinting out.

“And I need to see Snape,” Harry said to Ron. “Now. Is Remus here?”

Ron frowned. “Not since last night. Should I Patronus him?”

“Yeah, please.”

Ginny came next. “Ron, move, please,” she said briskly. Dropping to her knees, she pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Voldemort?”

“Yeah.” Her hand felt wonderful against his hot forehead.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“We all are,” Ron agreed. “It’s not fair that you’d go after him alone.”

“Fair?” Harry muttered, mostly to himself. “No, you stay here. There’s no one else to hold off the Death Eaters. And if I… need you for Voldemort, I’ll owl you.”

Neither of them were going to go along with this at all, but Hermione returned then. “Moody and Molly just left. Do you think he’s there?” she asked Harry a bit tremulously.

“I don’t know, maybe.” It was too much the same feeling as the last time Voldemort had stepped onto Hogwarts grounds. “But I need to go.”

Ginny strode out purposefully; Ron and Hermione pulled Harry up by his armpits. Settling him onto Ginny’s bed and leaving him with heaps of water and compresses and sleeping potions, they went to go get the rest of the household involved. Which, fine. A little patched up, he tried again to concentrate enough to force his way into… wherever Voldemort might be. Nothing. His scar still hurt, in a disorienting way, but offered no insight.

After a time he heard the Floo downstairs, and Moody’s growl resonated through the house: “Nothing.” Muffled noises as people gathered around him and Molly. Harry stayed where he was, to keep things simple.

At least, simple for another twenty minutes, when the Floo opened once more, immediately prompting Moody to shout, “ _Coward_!” followed by a few explosions and some shattering glass. So that’d be Snape, then. Suppressing a sigh, Harry pulled himself out of bed to go downstairs.

The Order was gathered in the living room, Remus pushing his way between Moody and Snape as Tonks grabbed Moody’s shoulders from behind. Snape was furious, but equally silent and pale. “Stop,” Remus was saying, squeezing in front of Moody’s wand. “He’s with me, Alastor, understand?”

Harry was poised halfway down the stairs, not keen on inserting himself into this scene (even if he had catalyzed it; _sorry, Snape_.) It was Ron who noticed him first, and _projected_ , “Oy, he wants Harry, let him through.”

Everyone looked up at him. “Uh, yeah. Upstairs?” he suggested.

Remus pushed them both through the throng. It wasn’t until he led them into a guest bedroom, locked the door, and threw a handful of soundproofing spells up that the silence was broken. “What?” Remus asked Harry, dropping into an armchair. “And yes, I’ve got to stay with you. They’ll throw you both out if I don’t.”

Snape nodded shortly, apparently resigned to this indignity. Harry felt sick, faced with his powerlessness. “We won’t – “

“It doesn’t matter what you _won’t_ ,” Snape said, dark eyes boring into him. “What is it?”

He didn’t know how to begin. “My scar’s hurt all day.”

At that, Snape made a noise of disgust, moving to leave.

“Stop.” Harry stepped in front of the door, shaking but actually able to look Snape in the eye. “He… must be upset that I’m not there. I can’t tell. I need to go back, but I need to… look like I’ve done something for him while I’m here.”

“Why would you need to go back?” The question came not from Snape but Remus. “The Order’s got years of experience with refugees. And plenty more of keeping _you_ away from Voldemort, in particular.”

“Because he’s moving quicker than you are,” Harry said bluntly. “Nobody will know what he’s doing if nobody’s on him. Especially if you’ve got Snape locked up here, being useless.”

“I can defend myself, thank you.”

Harry turned to Snape. “I need Scrimgeour. So I need you working with me.”

“Oh? And what would you do with him?”

He hadn’t gotten that far yet, but Snape was looking at him in a way that might possibly suggest something like compliance. “Voldemort said I could take his magic and his memories, to let him live as a Muggle,” he said, “but… I can’t. Could we fake his death?”

“Bit of a high profile death to fake,” Remus said. “And the chaos that would cause, at a moment when we _really can’t have_ chaos….”

“I know.” He fell silent, hoping for better solutions from either of them.

Snape took a seat beside Remus, looking at him thoughtfully. “You don’t want to _physiologically_ mimic death, you need to _socially_ mimic it. You need the publicity and political ramifications of his death.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you never need to touch Scrimgeour.”

“Why, is he alright?” Harry asked with suspicion.

“Of course.”

“ _Really_?”

“Harry,” Remus interjected. “Yes. The Order’s got knowledge of his location now. He’s just a bit… comatose.”

Harry didn’t look to Snape, didn’t even feel vindicated that Snape had moved to give Scrimgeour to the Order like he’d suggested. Unless, like himself, he was now dangling the promise of Scrimgeour between Voldemort and the Order as well. _Christ_. For his own part, Snape remained stiff and impassive, simply daring Harry to challenge him. He couldn’t afford to.

Remus went on: “We forged a ransom note specifically because the Ministry doesn’t fulfill them – “

“Not even for the Minister?”

Remus shrugged. “Apparently not. It sets a bad precedent. But that’s kept them from looking elsewhere, at least for now. Urteil – the acting minister, you missed that,” he added at Harry’s look. “She and Scrimgeour have something of a grudge, so… she might be moving slower than she could.”

“Huh.” He thought. “Then, could you send a second note, that they’ve killed him? Or… really, the papers just need to publish something. Enough to support whatever I tell him.”

“Which papers?”

“Uh, all of them.” At their dubious looks, he tried explaining: “He’s got a thing called a Panopticon, it shows the news from all over. And maps and all. It’s like the Marauders map, but… more.” (Snape raised his eyebrows at this; Remus ducked his head to murmur, “Later” to him.)

“If you could get some papers to publish, I don’t know, gossip,” Harry went on, “I could make up the rest. You do have someone at the Prophet, don’t you?” he asked, putting things together. “Did you get the bit about the Obliteration at Hogwarts removed?”

Remus pushed air through his teeth. “We did, yes. It seemed safer, to not have the spell published. Easier to control. How did you – ?” he inclined his head.

“The Panopticon is really good magic.”

Snape, ignoring this digression, looked to Lupin. “Xiemena’s still at the Prophet?”

“She is, for now. But this isn’t censorship of a few lines, it’s…. “

“Let me go,” Snape said deliberately, “and I would work with her. Then, the Death Eaters have got Yaxley at the Unexpurgated Gazette, and one of Greengrass’s sons at the Times Beneath….” He turned to Harry. “ _You_ shouldn’t be involved in this any further, as you are useless at lying without any talent in Occlumency.”

This wasn’t even worth denying. “So I’ve heard.” From Voldemort, a thousand times.

Snape added, “Which means that we’ll have to take your memory in order for you to be believable.”

Harry’s stomach dropped. “No.”

He sneered. “You haven’t got the time to learn Occlumency, nor does anyone have the time to teach you,” he said testily. “This is the only way to keep you safe.” His expression indicated that he thought Harry didn’t deserve this safety (Harry more or less agreed, honestly); beside him, Remus was silent and wouldn’t look at him.

His stomach twisted on itself more tightly. “And… would you tell the Order it’s not true? At least?”

Snape’s lips got thinner at this question. “It will happen by rumor and by strategic silences. They’ll believe what they’d like to believe,” he said.

“So what’s going to kill Scrimgeour? Officially.”

Snape and Remus exchanged a long, calculating look. “The Dark Lord has his own avenues of taking credit, if he’d like to. I wouldn’t publicly attach my name to anything, so that….” Snape uncharacteristically hesitated. “So that the Order wouldn’t have reason to further misunderstand my loyalties.”

“But then…. Sorry,” Harry said, the full impact of the shit situation Snape was in (Snape was _putting himself in_ , for his sake, fuck) now hitting him. He held the silence for a long moment, before asking, “What do I tell him, then? I mean, I’ve got to know more than what’s in the papers.”

Snape smiled thinly. “We’ll tell you how Scrimgeour dies after we’ve removed these memories.”

“Oh.” His palms had become slick with sweat; he scrubbed them on his jeans before offering his wand to Snape. “Before I regret it,” he muttered.

“Some regret would suit you, really,” Snape said dryly. He took the wand, weighing it in his palm, and pointed it at Harry. What happened next, he couldn’t say.

 

“Since when has Snape ever done anything for Harry?” He heard the disgust apparent in Ron’s voice. “Probably another cover to go skulking out to something for the Death Eaters.”

“Ron.” Remus’s voice was ever patient. “Snape has put himself in a lot of danger for Harry. Someday you’ll know the extent of it.”

“Bastard,” Ron muttered – about Snape, not Remus, presumably, because he continued, “Can we see him?”

“If he’d like.”

That was his cue, he supposed. He wrapped himself in a blanket as he got up. Ron and Remus stood in front of his bedroom door when he opened it; he couldn’t tell whether they’d intended to be overheard. “Hi. Snape is…?”

“A treasonous bastard,” Ron supplied. “What did he tell you?”

What _did_ Snape tell him? He frowned, trying to recall their most recent encounter.

Remus watched him carefully. “You don’t remember?” He had to shake his head. “Snape needed to take care of Scrimgeour, at your request. You both believed it would help in the strategy against Voldemort.” He looked concerned. “Right?”

“I… guess so.” This all felt incredibly unfamiliar to him, a foreboding he couldn’t shake off. The darkness of the hallway and the deep shadows of Remus’s face didn’t help.

“Harry, look at me.” Remus stepped in closer. “Snape disarmed you, do you remember?” Ron made a furious noise behind them.

Harry had to be honest. “No.”

“But there was a fortification on your wand, we found it afterward. So the spell… came on a bit strong.” Remus looked apologetic. “The effects will fade soon, I promise.”

He didn’t have it in him to be indignant, but he did check for his wand. In his pocket, safely. “Can I stay another night?”

“You’re not going _back_?” Ron was incredulous. “Snape _and_ Voldemort will kill you.”

“Snape has never been a threat to Harry,” Remus corrected, the barest edge in his voice. “You’ll believe his loyalties when he returns.”

Harry shook his head as though to clear it. “Has anyone gone with him?”

“No.”

“I should have.” He knew that much, he had to get to Scrimgeour.

“You and Snape agreed that he would take care of Scrimgeour while you looked after things here.” Remus motioned him downstairs. “Trust me. And stay as long as you need to. Of course.” Harry and Ron fell wordlessly into step as they descended.

There were plans being made – there were _always_ plans being made – but Harry wasn’t sure he was allowed in on them. Voldemort was waiting for him, he was sure, but he couldn’t move until he’d gotten confirmation that Snape had set out to do whatever he’d gone to do. Being among his friends, among the Order, wasn’t supposed to make him feel _stuck_ , and yet….

Ginny and Hermione were in the kitchen, canning hot jam; Ron must’ve had a station there that he’d abandoned to get Harry, because Hermione shoved a glass jar into each of his hands when he entered. “Hold these. Hi, Harry, are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah, thanks. Can I help?” (He knew nothing about canning, so was secretly hoping Hermione would say no.)

“Gin?”

Ginny shook her head, causing a cascade of shimmering hair down her back. “You just watch,” she said with a smile over her shoulder.

“Sure.” He had a seat at the table. “Did you all see Snape leave?” He was trying to reconstruct his morning.

“Of course,” Hermione said. “We had to do it while Moody was out. It wasn’t safe otherwise.”

“It wasn’t _safe_?” Ginny echoed. “It wasn’t comfortable, maybe. But Snape has gotten what he….” Turning, she caught the guilty look clouding Hermione’s face. “Sorry.”

“And what did he want with you?” Ron asked him.

Harry hesitated. “I can’t say.”

“You can’t – “ Ron puffed up in exasperation. “Harry, if you can tell anyone, it’s us. And if it’s about Voldemort, we _need_ to know, since we’re coming with you.”

Even though Ron’s back was to Harry, he still felt pinned to the spot by his friends’ concern and anticipation. “I told you, I need you and the Order here. Look, you already saved Hogwarts. We need to stay here, and together, for some… normalcy.”

Ron turned, and while Harry recognized his tautness as unspoken anger, his movement caused Ginny to slop jam over his hands instead of the jars. “Ow, _fuck_ it, Gin!” And the tension, while not defused, was at least momentarily forgotten.

The day did mimic normalcy, apart from the times that Harry had to talk his friends out of joining him. Once he’d heard from Snape, he’d leave at the earliest inconspicuous moment. Which, he had to admit that it was rather shit to slip away from his friends, but anything else would be cause for an ambush.

He and Ginny slept together in her bedroom that night – no sex, just the warmth of skin on skin. She fell asleep first, which was fortunate because when he was lying awake late that night, there was a sharp knock at the door. He held his breath, slipping from bed silently.

It was Snape, looking pale and harrowed. He made a motion to pull them both into the bedroom, until he looked over Harry’s shoulder to see Ginny asleep there, and he snorted. “Where may we speak?”

He was never good at being with Snape, much less giving him direction. “Um.”

Snape rolled his eyes (Harry felt it in the dark), striding up the hall until they reached an unoccupied bedroom. He motioned Harry into it, closing the door firmly behind them. Still leaning heavily against it, he said, “Scrimgeour is dead.”

Harry felt kicked in the gut. “You killed him?”

Snape gave him something like a look of surprise. “As you asked me to. Per the Dark Lord’s wishes. It will officially be anonymous, of course.” He gave a tiny nod. “So you’re free to return.”

“But what do I _say_?” That wasn’t the actual guidance he needed, but it was a start.

“That you neutralized Scrimgeour, as you needed to.” He gave Harry a severe look. “Say nothing about the Order’s cooperation with the plan, of course. It would only… complicate things.”

Unable to breathe, Harry lowered himself onto the bed behind him, and – surprisingly and unnervingly – Snape joined him. “It had to be this way,” he said lowly. “Scrimgeour had to die. Be grateful it wasn’t you to do it.”

“Am I supposed to thank you?”

Snape shook his head. “Only, don’t do anything that would render it in vain. You need to leave before daybreak.”

“Yeah.” He hesitated but couldn’t _not_ ask: “And where will you go?”

That got him a tight smile. “Wherever Remus is able to negotiate for me to be.”

His stomach dropped. As awful as Snape was, this wasn’t fair. “You could come with me,” he said. “And work on… whatever with Voldemort.”

“Ah, no.” Snape looked faintly surprised by the offer. “Three’s a crowd, and the Order wouldn’t agree to it.”

Right. Anyway, if Snape wanted to stay, then Harry was happy to let him stay. “Then I’m going back.”

“Don’t bollocks it up.”

Snape’s way of wishing him well, apparently. By the time he had gathered his possessions and levitated his trunk down the stairs, Snape had made himself scarce, and the house was still. Breaking open the Portkey back to Abdiah, he waited for the longest minute before the familiar jerk took him. The last thing he saw before he was pulled away was the flick of a light switch in a window of Grimmauld Place.

 

He arrived in the dark, on the familiar plateau above camp. But when he got to the bottom, things were wrong. There were no tents in the distance, no light or smoke. He stood, flummoxed, at how to find camp again – at least, until something huge hit him on his left, knocking him to the ground.

He allowed himself a long moment to begin breathing again, before scrambling to his feet. Or at least an attempt at it. A heavy weight held him firmly pinned. He looked up into the face of a lioness.

Jesus fucking Christ. The lioness watched him, one paw pressed to his sternum. He had just enough presence of mind to throw his wand away from himself. It had worked last time.

Miraculously, she removed her paw from his chest, picking the wand up between her teeth. Without it, Harry would have to drag his trunk. But it looked like he had a guide to the relocated camp.

It was during this long trudge through the desert sand that the enormity of Scrimgeour’s death hit Harry. One, he couldn’t _not_ hold himself responsible, of course. Two, the void of power would leave the political maneuvering of the wizarding world particularly open to Voldemort, and Harry wasn’t at all certain he wanted that. And three, once the public found out – what kept their hopes buoyed and motivation sustained? If not the Minister as a figure, then at least the stability and provision by a functional government. With everything gone to hell, who knows how the population would take it. He walked behind the lioness, not even trying to justify himself but rather merely fighting the panic that was boiling in his viscera. He had bloody upended everything.

The encampment finally arose on the horizon, where familiar tendrils of smoke rose against the still-dark sky. The lioness led him to the center of camp, where the only figure still awake was Wadha. She raised her eyebrows at his approach.

“Ara,” she said, greeting the lioness first. “Thank you.” Then she looked back to Harry. “You may have your wand. Voldemort is out, but his tent….” She gestured behind them.

“You had to move?”

“Itineracy is our security.” She polished the potions knives in front of her, and was apparently unwilling to expand on that.

Harry picked up his wand out of the sand. “Right. Thank you. Um, ‘night.”

He was able to let himself in to Voldemort’s tent. Dropping his trunk and kicking off his trainers right inside the entrance, he went to the kitchen, uncorking a bottle of wine. And then sitting in the living room silently, he had a drink for Scrimgeour. And then another for the chaos that was about to unfold. A third for his guilt and responsibility for it all.

He was at the end of the first bottle, with a second at hand on the ottoman beside him, when Voldemort entered. He looked unsurprised by Harry’s presence as he took in the scene. “I’ve got whiskey if you’d like to get drunk faster.”

“No, thanks.” He was lightheaded and a little bit further removed from his problems now. “C’mere.”

Voldemort raised an eyebrow but had a seat on the sofa opposite. “What happened?”

“Scrimgeour’s dead.” Harry’s tone was harsh and blunt, but so be it. “I told Snape to kill him. I hope you’re happy.”

“I am,” Voldemort said softly. “You’ve done very well.”

“And don’t sweet-talk me,” Harry snapped. “This feels _horrible_. I saw my friends again, they found me at Hogwarts. What if… what if they found out?”

“That you had a part in Scrimgeour’s death?” Voldemort supplied.

“ _Yes_. Fuck, that’s treason.” Harry reached for the second bottle, and Voldemort obliged him, opening it.

“Nobody will know,” Voldemort said. Getting a wine glass for himself, he sat to drink with Harry. “And your wizarding world will remain intact, with or without Scrimgeour. Particularly if you remain involved in my plans for it.”

“I just want everything the way it was,” Harry muttered into his glass.

“Things weren’t the way they were because of the Minister. It was about having your friends safe and nearby, wasn’t it?” Voldemort said smoothly. “Harry, that’s natural. And you can make that happen.”

“Nobody knows what’s going _on_. They’re all panicked.”

“Exactly.” Voldemort leaned in. “ _You_ can restore their order. All they need is someone to believe in again.”

It took Harry a few moments to parse this. All this time, he had been under the impression that Voldemort would install himself to the Ministry. But instead, it was going to be… “Me?” he asked in a tiny voice.

Voldemort’s lips twitched into a half-smile. “You. But not tonight.” Finishing his glass, he stood. “May I nappy you,” he asked, “before you wet the sofa?”

Harry only realized he had his hand jammed between his legs at Voldemort’s pointed glance. “Um, yes. Please.”

Summoning the nappy bag, Voldemort motioned for him to lie back. His trousers were tugged off, then his boxers, and the cool air on his balls gave him chills. This wasn’t the same comfortable intimacy that he had with Ginny, it never could be, but it was still something. As the alcohol made his brain buzz, however, he couldn’t think about it too much.

After pinning the soft nappy around him, Voldemort returned his wine glass, and Harry, still mostly reclined, sipped it. “And Hogwarts?” Voldemort asked, as if it were the continuation of a thought.

“What about it?” Harry mustered the energy to shrug. “It’s there. It can be restored. I… wasn’t there long enough to look at the charms.”

“I know you didn’t, I returned.”

That had been his scar, then. “That was stupid of you.” He gaze was unfocused and on the tent’s ceiling anyway, so he didn’t catch Voldemort’s reaction to that.

“I knew _something_ had happened,” Voldemort said. “Can’t you feel it, reciprocally? I feel… disruptions within you.”

It was something they had only kind of discussed before. But… something was off about it. He struggled to put his memories together. Voldemort… tracking him, with his own wand. He didn’t need to play dumb. “Bullshit,” he muttered.

That time he _did_ catch Voldemort’s reaction – shock and anger, if only for a moment. “Surely it’s obvious to you as well.”

He’d go through with this, then, and if Voldemort killed him, fine. “Not _that_. You bugged me.”

“Ah.” Voldemort shifted up the couch, slinging Harry’s legs over his lap. “I did, yes. It was the simplest way to assess the situation at Hogwarts without going there.”

“But then you went back anyway.”

“Your work weakened the Obliteration, and I found myself less affected. Although what I found still has to be evaluated.”

_That_ sounded ominous, but…. Harry finished his wine and Voldemort took the empty glass from him. “Another?”

Harry shook his head. The pressure in his bladder couldn’t be ignored anymore, and while he wanted to just let go, his lower half was pressed against Voldemort. He squirmed, judging his ability to get up. “I need to piss.”

“Surely you’re not shy?” Voldemort’s tone held a beautiful, mocking note. “Go.”

The first spurt of piss escaped him, rolling up his stomach and across his hips. “Not with you – “ He was blushing furiously, he could tell.

“Not with me here to witness it? To _feel_ it?”

Another spurt, warming the cotton. He thought that one was audible. “ _Yes_ ,” he hissed, trying to swing his legs off Voldemort’s lap.

While he succeeded in standing, the nappy grew wetter in his effort, and Voldemort stood to match him. “Harry,” he said lowly. He grabbed his upper arms. “Indulge me.”

It took his breath away. He was already off-balance, so Voldemort pulled him down to straddle his lap. He was holding on, so hard that he ached, as he parsed this.

“Relax,” Voldemort murmured. One hand was rubbing the front of his nappy.

He squeezed his eyes shut, his head listing against Voldemort’s collarbone. “This is wrong.”

“It is inevitable.”

It was. Having his knees spread, and his inhibitions lowered, he let go into the nappy. The hot wetness crawled up his stomach and down his balls. Voldemort’s hand had slipped from the front of the nappy to his crotch, and he was now stroking Harry’s balls and the underside of his cock through the hot, sodden fabric.

The tension had felt so pre-orgasmic that the waves of pleasure made perfect sense to his addled mind. He muffled a cry against Voldemort’s chest as he pressed out another stream of piss. The taut muscles of his belly slackened, and it felt amazing.

But then, the splash of liquid on the rug. Panicked, he dropped a hand to his lap. Voldemort had vanished the plastic pants, for goddamn reasons of his own. He tried stopping himself, tried holding it back with his hands, but… of course he couldn’t. “No,” he groaned, horrified. He had some instinct to leap up, and made a clumsy gesture at it, but Voldemort held him down.

“Finish,” he said. “I want you empty.”

The sopping wetness underneath him was panic-inducing. His hand moved farther. Voldemort’s lap was soaked, of course. As his fingers moved a little farther, he found Voldemort erect beneath those clinging, wet robes. Out of shock and bewilderment, his hand lingered as he processed this. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, get hard yet. He pissed a thick unrelenting stream, while the way his hand brushed Voldemort’s erection became deliberate. Then he scooted his hips up to grind their soaked pelvises together.

“Still want to fuck?” Voldemort murmured in his ear.

“ _Yes._ ”

“Then stop frotting like a schoolboy.” Voldemort pushed him off his lap, standing. “Come with me.”

Harry couldn’t stop touching the wetness between legs; first in a futile effort to keep his nappy from dripping on the floor, then because it just felt too fucking good. He was rubbing his cock hard through the cotton as he followed.

Voldemort meticulously undressed him in the bedroom, using the dry parts of his robes to wipe down his groin and legs. But Harry’s hands were everywhere, grasping and impatient, and when he saw the chance, he caught Voldemort offguard, pushing them both onto the mattress. “Just fuck me already,” he demanded, his voice raspy with drunkenness and reckless lust.

So Voldemort grabbed him, flipping him roughly to press his snakelike tongue to Harry’s arse, eliciting a squeal out of him. “You deserve this,” he murmured, his breath hot on Harry’s arsehole. “ _Richly_.” And with that, he plunged his tongue inside.

Harry bucked, the slithering wet heat inside him so intense that he was sure he would burst. He thought he heard a sob out of himself. Voldemort mouthed him decadently, licking and slurping as his spidery hands roamed the rest of Harry’s flushed body.

He vaguely registered the way Voldemort’s lips moved as an incantation, and he felt slick around his entrance. Voldemort’s tongue plunged in and out of him more vigorously, spreading the lube and making him slippery. Then Harry recognized the stiff tip of Voldemort’s cock at his entrance.

“Yes,” he groaned, lifting his hips. Jesus, he’d wanted this so badly, wanted to be penetrated and held down and bloody _owned_ by Voldemort.

But as Voldemort pushed into his virgin arse, he felt another intrusion – the gentle push of Legilimency. And though his thoughts weren’t in words, weren’t collected at all, he could feel Voldemort probing his mind. Figuring out, Harry realized, just what he wanted.

So Voldemort grabbed the back of his neck, shoving his face into the pillows in time with the thrusting, the way he was incrementally burying himself into Harry’s tight arse. “Dirty, shameless boy,” he growled into Harry’s ear. “As though your mind was ever safe from me. Did you think I couldn’t feel every sex-soaked fantasy you’d ever had?” He thrust in deeply, making Harry whimper. “And all about _me,_ of course.”

Jesus. So, he had wanked more than once to thoughts of Voldemort in these past few weeks, but he was too drunk and light-headed to be ashamed of it at the moment. “Just fuck me,” he snapped, his voice getting lost in the bedclothes.

Voldemort thrust into his arse over and over, grasping at his hips for leverage. God, he was massive, and he angled each stroke to be just on the cusp of pleasure and pain. Harry squeezed his eyes shut, reveling but so overwhelmed, as tiny gasps and sobs escaped his lips with each stroke.

Voldemort’s fingers wrapped around his cock, timing the strokes opposite his thrusting, so he felt like he was being wrung out, goddamn him. But the handjob… that felt familiar, that felt like all the times Voldemort had indulged him before. Or so he thought. God, if Voldemort had wanted this as much as he had….

Then Voldemort plunged hard into Harry’s arse, making him fully sob, and the thought was lost to his passion.

Their naked skin grew sweaty and slick against one another, hands clasping hands and roaming everywhere, cries filling the air, vibrating. “God, _yes_ ,” Harry groaned as Voldemort hit a delicate spot deep inside him. “Yes, yes – “ He fumbled for his erection, but Voldemort slapped his hand away – his body wasn’t his own tonight. He arched higher into Voldemort’s touch.

Voldemort’s breathing became hotter and shallower, ghosting across the back of Harry’s neck. Rather than cry out, he grabbed Harry’s chin and pulled his head sideways, pushing their gasping mouths together in a deep kiss and a groan as he came.

His come shot inside Harry, filling him and making the thrusts slippery. And Harry, overwhelmed by feeling so goddamn _marked_ , pushed his hips forward into Voldemort’s palm, his belly filling with warmth.

“ _Ah –_ “ he groaned against Voldemort’s mouth. “Yes – oh – “ He pushed his erection against Voldemort’s fingers desperately, recklessly, until the tension inside him felt ready to burst. “Ohh-- !”

He shot his seed thickly along the covers, a bright and incriminating splatter. Voldemort still pumped him, letting his come run over his fingertips, but his other arm now wrapped around Harry, holding their bodies together tightly. And finally, warm and _so_ satisfied, Harry slumped into the sheets.

 

The next morning, he awoke to the worst fucking hangover. Naturally. Performing some analgesic spells and conjuring a glass of water, he gulped down the regrets of last night.

But which he meant the wine-drunkenness, of course. He was still pretty pleased with the sex. But speaking of… Voldemort wasn’t in bed beside him, and by the sound of it, wasn’t anywhere in the tent at all. Harry didn’t bother putting any clothing on before going to investigate.

There was a newspaper out and open, apparently for him. He approached: _Minister Assassinated_? read the headline of the Prophet. Not the front page, not any real journalism either, just rumors, secondhand sources, speculation. And confirmation. Fuck. All his feelings came back in a rush – not that he had _forgotten_ , of course not, but the implications all felt so much more concrete as he stood before the newspaper. Fuck, it was all _real_.

Not even thinking, Harry snatched up the paper as he stalked back to his bedroom to dress. Throwing on a robe and trying to shove his feet into trainers, he found himself shaking.

He wasn’t sure what to do with this nervous, angry, mournful energy; but fuck, he _was_ going to find Voldemort. Goddamn him for not being here.

Though he hadn’t gone far – Harry found him in Wadha’s tent, sipping tea as they both pored over another newspaper. Nor did either of them look surprised when Harry stormed in. In fact, as Wadha rose to pour him tea, she rebuked him mildly, “You’re late.”

Harry sat heavily next to Voldemort. “We need to talk,” he said in an undertone.

Voldemort made a vague gesture. “So talk. And tell Wadha thank you,” he added in reproach.

“Thank you.” Harry summoned enough graciousness to take the tea cup from Wadha before again looking to Voldemort. “God, what am I supposed to do?”

Voldemort traded him the Prophet for the Panopticon. “What’s your instinct?”

Harry poked the Panopticon’s screen. “I really don’t need a teaching moment from you right now.” But as he scrolled over the Ministry, he saw the clouds of witches and wizards pouring in. Panicked, no doubt. Directionless, confused. “They’re still trying to fill the new Minister’s cabinet?” he asked.

This drew an amused noise from Voldemort. “You come in, waving the Prophet indignantly, and you haven’t actually _read_ it?”

“ _Well_.”

“Ursula Urteil isn’t interested in holding power long-term, I believe. She seems rather indifferent to providing her own cabinet. Or hanging onto Scrimgeour’s. They have, mm, rather incompatible philosophies of governance. To say the least. There will be emergency appointments, of course.”

Harry swallowed hard. “And… how much of the Ministry is already yours?”

This got him an appraising look. “Good boy. And not enough. Ten or fifteen percent. Which means your _Order_ would have to do some campaigning of their own. They would want you….” Voldemort considered. “In a public-facing role, of course. The Department of Public Relations, perhaps. Or the Department of Continuing Security. Most anything would get you enough clearance for useful knowledge.”

He was indifferent to the Ministry right now, being rather hung up on hearing Voldemort speak of the Order… Harry could’ve gagged. It felt too close to actually putting his friends in jeopardy, to have Voldemort speak so easily about them. Still, he met Voldemort’s gaze. “The Order doesn’t know I’m here,” he said. “They think I’m, I don’t know, stalking you through a jungle or something. And even then, they already don’t trust me.”

Voldemort sipped his tea. “So?”

“So assassins aren’t really the most stable profession to be campaigning for the Ministry, are they?” He was working this out himself, before Voldemort could tell him what to do. “I think… You need to not be around if I’m going to get appointed.”

Voldemort narrowed his eyes. “By which you mean…?”

He didn’t want to say the D word. He didn’t want Voldemort dead, not anymore; didn’t even want him to fake his own death. Just… “What if I said you were immobilized somewhere?” he offered. “That I’d, I don’t know, had you sitting in Azkaban awaiting trial.”

Voldemort’s face was taut with unhappiness at this conversation, and he moved a bit too deliberately to go rinse out his teacup. “Rather an easy claim to disprove, Harry.”

“Or you’re locked up in some foreign prison, then. Some government that the Ministry doesn’t speak to.”

“Absolutely not. You won’t benefit from my death.” Dare he say it, Voldemort sounded unnerved, even if he hid it well. “Your appeal wouldn’t be as _assassin_.”

“That’s all they want me for,” Harry interjected. “Other than that… who cares.”

He only realized how terribly impatient he sounded when he caught Wadha’s surprised look. (She’d been sitting with them, unapologetically listening.) He was going to undermine Voldemort’s authority entirely if he kept at this. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Voldemort merely returned his attention to the Panopticon. “Well, how many of yours are in the Ministry?” he asked.

“You… no,” Harry said, still aware of his insubordination. “You don’t get to ask that.”

Voldemort pointed a bony finger at him. “Because you’ve got to get appointed by the end of today.” He watched Harry’s face as this sank in. “People can’t _think_ on these things. That’s how you’ll be get in – with sentimentality and fear. Let the Order think of you as their own figurehead or puppet, that may be appealing enough for them. But we need to know whether you would have a majority already.”

“I… I really don’t know how many we’ve got.” It was true, and made him slightly resent how marginal he’d been to operations. Though it was probably for the best, that he wasn’t able to answer Voldemort’s questions.

“Mm.”

Wadha said something in Arabic to Voldemort, all while raising her eyebrows in Harry’s direction. Voldemort’s terse reply, also in his halting Arabic, didn’t sound at all reassuring.

He could _nearly_ grasp all this. Maybe he could heal the wizarding world… but he was only a plant. Whose plant? He couldn’t tell anymore. But Voldemort and Wadha were now drawing diagrams all across the Panopticon’s screen, which so absurdly reminded Harry of footie that he was momentarily distracted enough to disrupt his sense of dread.

“You’d have the Aurors on your side,” Voldemort offered again, needling at the point. “Have Moody introduce you as a candidate. His Aurors always do fall in line.” Voldemort tapped his chin with his long fingernails. “The Death Eaters know their role. Any opposition?”

“Um.” He couldn’t do this. “No. Maybe.” More from the Order than anyone, he imagined. But… he could _help_ them. He’d help everyone. “No, I don’t think so.”

Another few exchanges in Arabic, before Wadha stood in a finalizing way. “Don’t tie him to us,” she said in Parseltongue before turning her back.

“Never.” Voldemort ducked his head to speak in a softer voice. “Follow Malfoy’s lead. You’re the last to know it, but you’ve been exonerated by the Prophet. We have to move before anyone asks further questions. Once you’re in the Ministry, you may simply… _deflect_ them.”

Harry blinked, processing this. Jesus. “Did you do that?” he asked. “The Prophet?”

“Of course. _Now_ , listen to Malfoy. He’ll take you to Moody. You’ll be quite safe,” Voldemort said, a bit wryly.

“And after that?”

“Convince them you belong there. That’s all, for now.”

He lifted his teacup before Voldemort saw the torrent of emotions across his face. It felt so wrong, doing Voldemort’s bidding… but he could turn it around. With Voldemort and the Order supporting him (to varying degrees, in varying ways) he had the power and influence to _change_ things. This was unsustainable.

“Right,” he said, but his voice came out as a squeak. He cleared his throat. “Right.”

The smile that Voldemort gave him was beaming and oddly beautiful. “Excellent.”

 

Over lunch he had a hasty correspondence with Moody, half-explaining that he felt his position in the Ministry would greatly aid the Order and shore up a scared, uncertain wizarding world. (Voldemort dictated these letters, and then coached him on everything he was to say in front of the Ministry.) Then, later that afternoon, he found that apparently security at the Ministry was defunct by now, because he simply walked in. And then… what? He approached the posted directory.

“No need.” A heavy hand was dropped on his shoulder, and he looked back into the pinched face of Lucius Malfoy. “I’ll show you to my office.”

“Thanks.” Harry shrugged off his hand in distaste, but nevertheless followed.

“Yours has been an interesting absence from the public eye,” Lucius said as they stepped into an empty elevator. “What, pray tell, would your _constituents_ think about this period?”

“I don’t want to talk about this with you,” Harry muttered.

“You _brat_.” Lucius stepped in front of him as their elevator descended. Lowering his face, he grabbed Harry’s robe by its collar. “We have given him _years_ of loyalty, but _you_ – “

Oh god. He swung his hand backward, hitting the elevator console in vain hopes that there was a panic button there. Rather, he just hit the emergency brake, and the elevator slammed to a halt beneath them. “Let go of me.” He grabbed at Lucius’s cold fingers, wrenching them away from his throat.

“What do I get, for setting you up for such _success_?” Lucius hissed.

Harry ran his hand over the console, but none of the buttons released the elevator. And he couldn’t break eye contact with Lucius, who was clearly cracked. “I don’t know,” he said. “Ask Voldemort.”

“ _Shh_.” Slapping a hand over Harry’s mouth, Lucius’s fury had instantly turned to panic at the sound of Voldemort’s name. “Don’t…. The Ministry tracks mentions of his name, you stupid boy.”

Harry pushed Lucius away. God, he was handsy. “Then I guess we can’t have this conversation. Just, take me where I need to be.”

After a tense moment of consideration, Lucius straightened, attempting to look professional and not crazed. Jesus. “One moment.” He rolled back his sleeve, exposing the Dark Mark. “I’ll need to touch it to yours, to confirm your presence for him.”

“My… no.” Harry shoved his own sleeve up to reveal unmarked flesh, affronted. “It’s not like that.” Really. Him, a Death Eater? Had he ever _skulked_ anywhere, or practiced laughing maniacally, or tortured a Muggle, or assaulted a teenager in a Ministry elevator? No. No, he hadn’t.

Lucius frowned down at Harry’s bare skin. “Of course,” he said crisply, setting the elevator in motion with a wave of his wand. They descended.

Malfoy took him to his office, as it turned out, not to speak with him but to sequester him. “Stay,” he said, gesturing with his cane. “Somebody will retrieve you as necessary.”

“I want to hear what you all say,” Harry protested.

Malfoy sneered. “What you _want_ is irrelevant, Mr. Potter.” As he left, he bound his office door in wards.

Well, sod it. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, be treated like this any longer. He had been bound up and locked away quick enough in these past few weeks. Once he heard Malfoy’s voice far enough down the corridor, he edged up to the wards. They overlapped across the door, like a glowing chain link fence. And when he brushed his fingertips across them, they buzzed and burned like a live wire.

But that shock… it seemed enervating. Seemed as though a sort of vacuum of power ran through it, magical links structured around a void that in fact gave it its strength. He’d never really played with wards before, but this, this was interesting. And he knew more than enough about restoring magical voids. He held open his palms, letting them fill with magic.

When they felt heavy, he focused on flooding the ward. Filling it with magic to make it malleable. “Bakashi otem, bakashi otem,” he muttered under his breath, feeling the groove open in the air before him. He felt a surge, and then the crackle of the wards faded. They sagged a bit, and when Harry grabbed them, they stretched like warm chewing gum. (Ew.) He kind of… absorbed the magical potency into his palms as he pulled away the now-wisps of the wards.

He was too indignant to be triumphant, however, and stormed out of the office. Voices carried down the hall from a boardroom meeting. Good.

Harry barely knocked before letting himself inside. “Hello.” Malfoy, Moody, Shacklebolt, and the rest of a room he didn’t know. “May I join you?”

Lucius’s look was coldly furious, but Mad Eye’s gaze wasn’t much more welcoming. Fuck. “We’re discussing your appointment as Under-Secretary of the Department of Affective Security,” Malfoy said. “It is a _confidential_ conversation.”

“Right.” He fought back all the insecurities and childishness he felt. “But as I’ll be making legal decisions soon, it is important that I be made aware of everything significant that’s happening. Malfoy.”

Now Lucius only looked doubtful – unsure where Voldemort’s plans ended and Harry’s own began. He spread his hands in apparent concession. “Take a seat.”

Likewise, Moody and Shacklebolt looked uncertain about whether he was acting under orders. Moody kept his magical eye trained on Harry even as he resumed the conversation: “The plurality should be enough, then. I assume the Counsel on Good Faith will file an objection,” he said, looking to a witch, who nodded. “And we can discuss the filing once it’s in. Otherwise…?” he looked around the room, pausing for interjections. “I’ll present Mr. Potter to Ursula, then, for her to confirm the appointment formally?”

“With the boy here,” said a glowering wizard at the far end of the table, “may we at least ask about his proposed measures? What you will do for the wizarding world,” he said to him directly, with a smile that, even at this distance, was obviously more of a threat than invitation.

God, didn’t he get the memo that he was only a puppet, as far as they were concerned. And _boy_ , how dare he. He drew himself up in his seat. “I’ve been on a research mission this past month,” he addressed the official. “Studying measures against Dark Magic. Specifically, tracking Voldemort himself.” The stifling of the air in the room at his name gave him some satisfaction.

The man remained unconvinced, raising his eyebrows. “As has been well-publicized, Mr. Potter. And?”

“I know enough about his plans now, that I need official power to begin the counter-measures myself. Anything else would only slow us down.” At his continued skepticism, he had to pull out his bloody _Chosen One_ credentials. “I’m not free to say what has kept me safe from him all this time, but I think it’d benefit everyone to keep me at the forefront of measures against him. And of course, I’m willing.”

This all was paraphrased from what Voldemort had coached him on earlier, but it worked here – matching the political vagueness and doublespeak of their own words. And not only was he channeling Voldemort’s words, now that he thought of it, but also his own impatient-patronizing tone. But so help them all if they called him a boy again. “I’ll begin anti-terror measures today,” he told the room. “So that things can return to normal.”

That’s not why any of them wanted him here, he wasn’t some tactical mastermind. He was barely adequate at most things, honestly. They just all assumed he could be manipulated to their own ends. He could see it in their eyes. Still, he folded his hands in a motion of professionalism. “I understand that some of you have doubts,” he continued, “over my ability. But I’d welcome all of your guidance and mentorship, to collect all the skills and knowledge necessary.” He lifted his chin slightly toward the wizard in a silent question; he shook his head.

He only had to look the part, for now. Play it without flinching. Everyone else – including Voldemort – would be so eager to fill the void that he’d have no lack of directives. He settled deeper into his seat as the officials resumed talking about him.

 

After his installation as Under-Secretary of Affective Security, Harry found that being in the Ministry was about as tedious as expected. Stacks of paper were dropped onto his desk in the mornings, with glowing tabs indicating which ones he should and shouldn’t sign (in accordance with the official who was passing them on, of course). Once, when he’d asked about them, he’d been told that they’d been in committee for so long that there was nothing left in them to discuss, thank you. So he signed them.

They’d given him a home nearby, as part of his installation, and it was very nice, at least. Not that he ever really lived in it, spending as most of his free time (which wasn’t much) in Grimmauld Place. So a week later, it was only out of exhaustion that he was taking a nap on the sofa there late one afternoon, having stumbled into his private Floo just to get out of the bloody office. So when there came a knock on the door, he thought he only heard it in a dream.

A second knock, more insistent. “God bloody damn you,” he said, rolling himself to a standing position. Maybe it was solicitors, maybe he could just go back to sleep.

A third knock. No, why would solicitors be at a Ministry-owned home? He pulled his robes approximately into place and went to get the door.

“There you are,” his visitor said as Harry opened it to him. The man – tall, dark-haired, with an out-of-place sleek hairstyle – pushed past him into the foyer. And then before Harry could protest, the Glamour spell melted and Voldemort stood before him. (Harry slammed the door before any passerby might peer in.) “Congratulations on your appointment,” Voldemort said, bowing his head in a way that could be… sincere? “May we talk?”

Harry finally found his voice. “Hi. Um, yes. There’s a parlor….” He gestured, leading Voldemort down the hall, then closing the locking the frosted glass door behind them. It was only when he sat down and just looked at Voldemort, the weirdness of seeing him in this place, that he could piece together his thoughts. “You really shouldn’t be here,” he said. “I don’t know what sort of tracking there is on this house, it could be bugged….”

Voldemort looked away from the liquor cabinet long enough to give him a skeptical look. “Bugging the homes of cabinet members would be gauche,” he pronounced. “And no politician would have ever consented to it, except perhaps you.”

“What does that mean?” Though he attempted indignation, he still accepted the glass of scotch that Voldemort offered.

“It means that you’ve been quite compliant with all the Ministry’s moves so far.” When Harry opened his mouth to protest, Voldemort held up one spidery hand. “As you should have, I _know_. But now that you’ve got their trust – or something like it – you need to turn in a different direction.”

Harry made a frustrated noise in his throat. “It’s not like that,” he protested. “They don’t let me do anything. Why would they, it’s not like I know anything.”

Voldemort sat opposite him, putting the Panopticon between them. “They’ll reconsider when you begin giving thoughtful, nuanced input on their work. What’ve you done so far?”

“Um. Funding new business along Diagon Alley. Funding repairs in Hogsmeade from the fighting. Funding survivors’ benefits….”

This wasn’t the sort of answer Voldemort was looking for, apparently. “I mean, what have you done _politically_.”

“Everything is politics,” Harry quoted back at him. The scotch was going to make him cheeky tonight. “But here, I’ll show you the measures they’ve given me. Um, _accio_ paperwork.”

Delightfully, his papers did come fluttering into the room, landing on the table in a mess. Voldemort hummed happily, beginning to sort them into little piles that Harry didn’t understand. “Good,” he said. Then, after a moment, finally pausing to thoroughly read a report: “What’s your sense of France?” he asked without looking up.

Were they really going to do this? Voldemort was going to sit in his Ministry-appointed home and do his paperwork for him? Harry shrugged off the insanity of this, to be considered at a later date. “France… Minister Certeau, right? Um, there was a report – they’re thinking of calling off their alliance with someone….”

“Algeria.” Voldemort held up the report in question. “Bit shit for Algeria, though; they might as well consider themselves colonized all over again.”

“The Ministry – our Ministry – wants to let it happen.”

“Has to let it happen,” Voldemort corrected. “No matter what they tell you, Britain’s not strong enough on its own to outmatch France, and no one else will go in on this. Too risky.” Voldemort glanced up. “Have you met Certeau yet?”

“Only her deputy… Julianna something?”

A twitch of Voldemort’s lip, and he pushed the reports aside to slide the Panopticon to Harry. “You’ll need this,” he said. “Use it well.”

“Right. Thanks. So… you think it’s right, what they want do with France?”

Voldemort tapped his fingers on his glass. “It may leave Algeria vulnerable. Not only to France, but the entire world.” He gave Harry a crooked smile. “Would you like to restart the British Empire?”

“No.” Harry raised his eyebrows at Voldemort. “Would you?”

Something like a laugh. “Unsurprisingly, yes. Though I wouldn’t begin with Algeria.”

Harry thumbed through the Panopticon. “Oh, but… weird. ‘Wandwork outlawed in curriculum,’” he read out the headline. “ _The Algiers Casters’ Gazette_. That, um, makes them sound really powerful.”

“Perhaps.” Voldemort rose to bring the bottle of scotch to the table. “Non-Western style magic. You heard Wadha recommend it. It can be powerful. It’s certainly less predictable in dueling than wandwork. All the more reason not to colonize them, that nobody knows how they fight.”

“So they’re safe without France?”

“Hopefully, yes.” Voldemort passed the report across the table. “Sign that one, then.”

He did. “I can do wandless magic too.” He had been dying to tell Voldemort, get some insight into it hopefully. “That thing you showed me, of getting magic from the air? I broke a ward with it last week.”

It happened quickly. Frowning, Voldemort pulled out his wand, shooting a spell at Harry. He found himself in a matrix of glowing yellow cords, woven so tight that he could scarcely see through them. “Show me,” Voldemort said.

Well, at least he’d never had a problem performing under pressure. He looped his fingers through the cords, trying to ignore the seeming high voltage buzz, and pushed magic through his palms. As the wards became supercharged, they grew soft, until he was able to pull the loops apart to extract himself from the cage. Voldemort only watched in silence, his brow furrowed.

“You have to add magic,” Harry explained as he shook off the last bit of the ward. “Not take it away. Then it just… I can pull it apart. I haven’t tried it on anything else yet.”

“Hm.” Clearly Voldemort was withholding comments, was contemplating this. “I have some theory of magic books, if you’d like….”

“I don’t want theory of _anything_ books,” Harry objected. “I only thought it was cool.”

“Cool indeed,” Voldemort deadpanned. “In that case, we could either experiment with magic tonight, or sign off on reports.”

“Magic,” Harry said instantly. Politics – though Voldemort wouldn’t approve of this – could wait.

When they returned to the kitchen to make dinner, Harry grabbed the end of the strand of magic he’d been maintaining and willed it into a balloon shape, to trail after him. Only when Voldemort happened to glance back and snort, “Precious,” did he let it pop.

As they sorted through the cabinets and pantry (as Harry’d also been eating at Grimmauld Place the past week), he couldn’t help but think of how happy this made him. It was the strangest iteration of domesticity, but it worked. He cleared his throat. “Are you still staying in Abdiah?”

“Yes.” Voldemort took down a mixing bowl. “Though they’ve relocated a few times.” He gave Harry a frown. “You can’t return, not now.”

“No.” A Ministry member running off to an itinerant group in the desert, really. “What if… do you want to stay here?”

Voldemort gave him that look again, that look he had when he was calculating more than he’d let on. “You don’t think anybody would mind?”

“Well. Look, you could have the top floor, this house is bloody massive. We could put a shielding charm on it.” He was so certain it would work. And he really couldn’t live alone like this.

With a moment’s pause, Voldemort nodded. “Oh, Harry,” he said, still so wry and so easy. “You do know how to keep your friends close and enemies closer.”

“You’re not – I mean – sod it,” Harry spluttered. “Give me those.” He grabbed a bag of potatoes out of Voldemort’s hands and, after a long draw of scotch, set to scrubbing them.

 

But Voldemort, goddamn him, summoned the stack of reports from the parlor and began to read them over dinner, quill and fork poised in opposite hands. “I said not tonight,” Harry objected, eyeing the stack suspiciously.

Voldemort waved him off with the quill. “You haven’t got to do it. I’ll tell you which ones to sign.”

“But….”

Voldemort set both quill and fork down as he met Harry’s gaze. “How are you going to legislate?” he asked. It sounded sincere. “What do you value? You could sign legislation for the good of Britain. Or for international good, at Britain’s expense. You could support surveillance measures for safety’s sake, _or_ allow wizards their privacy. You could help the poor _or_ keep the economy dynamic. Merlin, not that the wizarding world even has a coherent economy, but that’s beside the point….”

“Fine.” Harry threw up his free hand in a half-gesture of surrender. “It’s complicated. That’s why I’ve got advisors.”

Voldemort gave him a terrifying smile. “No, that’s why you have me.”

Another sip of scotch. Jesus, he’d need more to survive the night. “Alright, _senior advisor._ Neutralize your Death Eaters. Stop sending them to do stupid, violent shit.” (Another sip so he didn’t have to see Voldemort’s face at that.) “Make it safe to return to Hogwarts. Stop the fighting everywhere else. Do you know those people?” the thought struck him. “Have you got, like, a dark lords union?”

Voldemort nearly choked. “I do know some of them,” he said, upon composing himself. “I have leverage over none of them. You’ll have to achieve your world peace some other way.”

“Can you just… kill them?” Hearing himself, Harry flinched. “Sorry, I don’t want that.”

“You wouldn’t,” Voldemort agreed. “And even if you did, it’s not as though what you think of as evil emanates from any single source. Some of the most violent people are already the heads of state. And some separatist movements feed hungry children. And some warlords are holding off even more corrupt regimes in the region. Thus….” He gestured the stack of reports, lifting his eyebrows meaningfully.

“Fuck,” Harry groaned.

“Precisely.” But after a moment, he nodded to Harry encouragingly. “What else do you want?”

“Oh. Um. Which countries need our help?”

“By that you mean…?”

“I don’t know. Food, money? Any dictators need to be taken out?”

Voldemort ducked his head in amusement. “Too many,” he said. “But again, that might create more problems than it solves.”

“Right.” He ate while Voldemort added notations to the reports that only he could understand.

But by the end of dinner and Harry’s washing up, Voldemort was halfway through the papers. “Sign these,” he said, pushing a stack toward Harry. “Reject these.” A second stack.

“And if anyone asks why…?”

With a flick of his wand, Voldemort’s thin script in the margins morphed into Harry’s uneven scrawl. “You’ve already given adequate justifications in your notes, of course.”

“Thanks,” he said, flipping through the pages. “Really, how come you never got into politics?”

“Ah, but I did,” Voldemort said loftily. “The manipulation of social power, it’s all I’ve done with my life.”

“Fine, I meant – “

Voldemort waved him off. “I never joined the Ministry because… it’s so inefficient, and so petty, and so banal. The banality of evil,” he said to himself as an afterthought. “Though you – by which I mean me – we might be able to effect something worthwhile.” Sucking the end of the quill with uncharacteristic humility, he added, “At least, that’s my hope.”

He liked arrogant Voldemort so much more than uncertain Voldemort. “Sure,” he said, forcing a smile. “Of course.”

They set the wards for the top floor that night, set them so thoroughly that the staircase leading to it couldn’t even be found with a particular seeking spell cast right at it. “Like a password,” Harry commented uselessly as he followed Voldemort up. “Did you ever have a treehouse?”

Voldemort gave him a look somewhere between exasperation and amusement. “I did not.”

“Me either.” He sealed up the staircase behind them. “Dudley did though, a great one with a rope ladder….”

Voldemort was pacing through the rooms, not listening to his babble. “May I vanish a wall?” he called from inside a study. “All my potions would fit in here if I could.”

“Sure, I don’t care.” Harry went farther down the hall, where there was an airy bedroom. “Um, could I sleep with you?” he called back. “I mean, in your bed.”

“Hm?” Voldemort came up behind him, surveying the bedroom. “Yes, you may.” A beat. “I assume you’d like to be spanked and nappied first?”

Harry glanced back to see just how mocking Voldemort was being. Not much, if he could read Voldemort’s expressions by now. “Uh, yeah?”

Voldemort gave him a brief nod, turning to leave. “What about that hideous statue, could I vanish that?” he called over his shoulder, ducking back into the study.

“Whatever you want.”

He ended up joining Voldemort in the study for the rest of the night, bobbling a ball of magic in his hands as Voldemort arranged his potions ingredients. “What do you want?” Harry asked curiously. “I mean, politically.”

“World domination, of course.”

He knew Voldemort well enough at this point to know that was a deflection. “Really.”

Voldemort sucked his teeth, thinking. “There’s… I can tell you more when I learn more.”

“Learn more about what?”

“Harry.” Voldemort looked slightly pained. “For once, trust me.”

“Oy. You’re in my house. You think I don’t?”

Voldemort inclined his head. “There’s a crisis,” he said. “Or rather, there would be a crisis. I’m working to defuse it.”

“And?”

Voldemort only shrugged his bony shoulders, turning back to his cauldron. “And if I do, you’ll have never known it.”

Infuriating, completely infuriating, but he recognized that Voldemort would reveal nothing more. “Fine,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”

“I’ll be in in a moment.”

And he was, pulling Harry’s robes off without decorum. “Did you miss this?” he asked lowly. “Is that why you wanted me back?” Pushing Harry backwards on the bed, he summoned the nappy bag. (Which he had brought with him. As though he’d known he’d be staying. God, was he that predictable?)

He had gone back to Ginny when he was able, a couple times since his appointment, and that was great… but so was this, in a different way. Hoisting him by his ankles, Voldemort smacked his arse, just once but stingingly, making him hiss. “Answer me.”

“Yes. God.” A strategic pause: “And, um, could you tie me up tonight?”

Voldemort pinned the sides of the nappy tightly. “How can I, since apparently wards no longer hold you?” It was a rhetorical question, of course: he conjured shackles, looping them through the headboard. “Bloody fetishist, what would you do without me,” he muttered, in a good-natured way.

Harry’s hands were chained over his head, stretching his lithe body along the bed. He wanted Voldemort to look at him, to look at him hungrily, but he only turned away to wash up for bed. So instead Harry settled against the comforter, relishing how ridiculous he felt.

Voldemort dimmed the light as he got into bed. Without saying anything, a moment later, he felt Voldemort’s hands at his waist, pulling back the top of his nappy. “What – “

“Shh.” Voldemort moved closer, pressing their pelvises together, to slide his cock over Harry’s belly. “I didn’t use the toilet before bed. Forgive me.”

With that, a hot stream splattered his skin, getting absorbed into the cotton of the nappy. Harry gasped, yanking at the shackles, futilely pulling himself away. “What are you _doing_?” His skin burned where Voldemort was pissing on him.

“What a stupid question.” He sat up a bit, angling himself down Harry’s nappy, so his piss trickled through his pubic hair and over his hardening cock. Oh fuck. His back was arched, his breathing uneven, as Voldemort pinned him down by the chest with one hand and pissed on him with the other.

It collected beneath him, running over his cock and balls, pooling under his arse. Making him feel bloody filthy. Having his cock cupped by his own soaked nappy was one thing, but to keep Voldemort’s steaming piss so close to his skin….  He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back panic and humiliation about as successfully as he was fighting back his hard-on.

“From now on,” Voldemort murmured, “if you wish to be nappied, this is my privilege.” His fingers played between Harry’s legs, stroking his cock through the wet fabric. “Do you understand?” His stream still ran over Harry’s skin, steam rising up to his nose and making him feel so defiled.

“Please don’t leave me in this,” Harry pled. Squirming made it worse, forcing piss out of the fabric with every motion. Volatile silence. “I understand,” he amended. “Use… fuck. Use the nappy. But don’t leave me in it.”

Voldemort squeezed the crotch playfully, forcing a torrent of piss down Harry’s balls and arsehole, making his breath hitch. “I’ll change you in the morning,” he said, letting the last dribble fall across Harry’s navel. “As always.”

Harry groaned. He was so humiliated and so hot, all at once. “Fuck me,” he begged. His cock was already stiff, already pressing the nappy away from his body with its length.

“That also must wait until the morning.”

“No, I can’t,” he objected, his voice embarrassingly close to a whine. Already thoroughly debased, it’s not like he could humiliate himself any further by his pleading. “Look.” He thrust his hips upward, indicating his erection. (Voldemort did indeed look, and his unimpressed glance was its own horrific, exquisite moment of shame.) “I – I’m too hard to ever get to sleep. Just let me come.”

He didn’t have enough freedom of movement to even frot the front of the nappy in a satisfying way. It was literally the least Voldemort could do, when he dropped his hand to the front of the nappy. “Go on, then.”

God. It would be even more embarrassing than begging, to thrash into Voldemort’s touch uselessly to rub himself off. But he was bloody captivated by this sort of humiliation, and when he helplessly pushed his hips forward, it gave him full body chills. Voldemort kept his hand barely on Harry’s cock, teasing and unhelpful, pulling his touch away for long awful moments. “Pathetic,” he pronounced.

His insides coiled, tense in the most delicious way. “Yes,” he gasped in agreement. He found a rhythm, pulling and pushing his lower half in a way that felt like a stroke. Voldemort watched him intently, every desperate motion of Harry’s so bloody amusing to him. His hips bumped and thrust on their own, sending shocks through him, more and more electrifying. And then the wave of his lust crested, and he threw his head back, choking back a gasp as he came.

 

He awoke again early, far too early. Voldemort was still asleep, his expression unusually relaxed. And of course, Harry had to piss.

The nappy felt clammy but no longer saturated. He’d slept in Voldemort’s piss all night and it was okay? He bent his knees, lifting his lower half the slightest bit off the bed, to ease his bladder. And with the scotch-fueled urgency and the delicious comfort of being in a nappy again, he hardly felt the moment at which he let loose.

The cotton once again grew hot around him, awakening his libido once more. The ticklish heat running down his arsehole made him bite his lip so he wouldn’t cry out, wouldn’t wake Voldemort. The bedroom was silent but for his uneven breathing and the steady hiss inside the nappy. God, he didn’t realize how much he’d been holding. The moisture crept around his arse and up his back. He was a goddamn mess.

He pushed piss out until he was emptied, a warm sense of relief replacing his urgency. “Voldemort?” he asked into the barely-lit room.

Voldemort reached over without even looking. “You’re wet?” he asked. Squeeze, forcing more warm piss out of the fabric. “Ah.”

“Please fuck me.” Harry’s voice was ragged. “I don’t even care if you change me, just fuck me.”

Voldemort didn’t bother to let him up, only tugged down the plastic pants and unpinned the nappy. “Mm.” He ran his fingers along the shaft of Harry’s hardening cock, just a few times. “You’re really very depraved, Harry.”

“I know,” he groaned. He felt Voldemort shift on the bed and push his ankles high once more. But this time, it was to press a few fingerfuls of conjured lube against his arsehole. “ _God_ ,” he groaned.

Voldemort was a little rough, a little callous, as he prepared them both. “You do need to grow up,” he said lowly, each of his words punctuated by a push of his fingers. “It is embarrassing, how much you love to be helpless.” He moved in, spreading his knees wide. “Really, I don’t know what I am going to do with you.”

“Just fuck me,” Harry sobbed. His insides throbbed around Voldemort’s fingers. He wanted, needed, to be filled.

And when Voldemort pushed forward, throwing Harry’s legs over his shoulders, he let out a louder sob. “ _Yes_.” He jerked uselessly against the shackles. Voldemort thrust and thrust, so rough and deep that Harry was bent double, their steaming skin pressed together. When Voldemort was close, he grabbed a handful of Harry’s hair and, pulling his head back, nipped at his throat. Oh god yes.

His other hand pumped at Harry’s cock, pumped until all he could feel was heat and steam and sweat between their bodies. “Fuck,” Harry groaned, and Voldemort nipped at his mouth in response. He smoldered inside, thrashing and arching as Voldemort fucked him.

And when Voldemort got close, his hand tightened in Harry’s hair, yanking his chin up to pressed his lips to his exposed throat. When Harry groaned again, he was sure it reverberated against Voldemort’s thin lips. “Yes – ah – “ He slammed his pelvis upward, relishing the deep friction inside of himself.

Voldemort’s fingers tangled more deeply, his lithe body arching – “Ohh,” he groaned against Harry’s throat as he came. Seeing, feeling Voldemort so vulnerable and human at that moment twisted Harry’s insides, in a good way. With a last thrust, he spattered his come over Voldemort’s pumping hand.

Voldemort let him up when the sweat was only beginning to cool on his skin. “Right,” Harry said, working to gain his composure. “I, ah, should head in soon.” But before he could rise from bed, it took just about forever for his legs to stop quivering.

 

This lasted in impossible peace for nearly two weeks, and it wasn’t so bad, being a puppet legislator. Voldemort and the Order both gave him directives (and, he suspected, both disregarded his input and enacted whatever they’d enact regardless). Sometimes they even agreed.

And on the home front, things were also well. Getting railed on the regular was good for him, as it turned out, and he and Voldemort had thoroughly worked out domesticity. So much so that they got a bit lax. Which is how what happened, happened.

It was late in the evening and they were both in the parlor, Voldemort reading legislation and Harry taking notes off the Panopticon. Suddenly, a crack outside the rear of the house startled them both. Leaping to his feet, Voldemort was gone before Harry even had his wand out.

It was only a distraction, though – a second later, the front door got kicked in, with an awful splintering sound. “ _Hey_ \-- !” But that’s all he was able to say before the air seemed to get sucked out of the house and his vision went dark.

 


	4. Chapter 4

When he woke again, it was in a windowless room, disorienting him in every way. He stood on wobbly legs from the sofa and reached for his wand. Gone. Of course. But more disorienting was that, as he paced the cool stone chamber, he couldn’t feel any magic in it. It was a subtle sensation, but his skin just didn’t seem to buzz as it used to. He pushed open the door and went to explore.

It was a tower, or may as well be – the external walls formed a hexagon, the floor plan narrow but five stories tall. No windows anywhere, maddeningly. But on the top floor, he stifled a cry, finding Voldemort slumped indecorously against a wall.

At first he thought he was dead, and his heart clenched. But upon getting closer, he could see the shallowest of breathing making his narrow chest rise and fall. Of course, he was only passed out from the magic-free environment… but Harry didn’t want to know how long that would hold. He hoisted Voldemort onto a bed in the next room over, and then slumped upon it himself to think.

Whoever had ambushed them… well, now knew about the strange alliance (if that wasn’t too drastic a word between him and Voldemort). And apparently also knew how badly a magic free environment crippled Voldemort. But neither of them were in Azkaban, against all odds. It must be the Order. They’d lured him out once before. And they’d keep him out of official trouble, if they could (bless them). But why had they brought Voldemort here, instead of Azkaban?

The worst part of it, at the moment, was having Voldemort’s inanimate body just lying there (he pushed the word _corpse_ out of his mind). Though he couldn’t feel residual magic in the air to be gathered, he tried, pressing both hands to Voldemort’s sunken chest in an effort to revive him. Nothing. Maybe there was more magic elsewhere in this fortress, if only by accident. He went to search for it.

So, a retracing of his steps to find any wisp of magic. But no, the entire tower felt like a void, rendering them stupid captives Muggles, or as good as. But without magic… without Voldemort…. He focused on keeping his breathing steady. Then a more thorough search, one that took hours, scrambling for any fixture that might open a sliver of the tower to the external world. Knocking on every brick in the wall, listening at every stone on the floor for secret passages. There was no external door apparent at all, and given the tower’s magic deficit, he doubted the fireplaces were Floo’d. Still, this holding cell of the Order’s must have some way of getting in and out. It was only when Harry found nothing at all, that his claustrophobia truly welled up. Fuck.

“Right,” he said into the thick silence. “Right, I’ll just… wait here. For someone to drop in.” He spun around once more to survey the impenetrable tower, and with an awful clenching in his chest, went to vomit.

 

He didn’t get any answers until… the next morning? There were no clocks in this fortress. But he heard the sounds of arrival downstairs and went to investigate.

Lupin. Good lord, his insides warmed about ten degrees. Though Lupin didn’t look particularly happy to see him. Fair enough.

“Hi, Professor.” Harry’s voice was rough from panic-vomiting all night. “Um, where am I?”

Lupin was putting away covered dishes, taking stock of the cupboards – not a good indicator that he would be free anytime soon. “A safehouse. As it were.” His face looked worn and it occurred to Harry that they’d probably all had a sleepless night on his behalf. “Really, we just needed to neutralize you as we moved into the next steps.”

“Next steps…?” Harry slid onto a barstool at the island counter, feigning normalcy.

A tense smile from Lupin. “You’re compromised, Harry. I can’t tell you much.”

God, that hurt. He deserved it and it hurt. “But… Sorry. I’m really sorry.” He held Lupin’s gaze at that, looking for any bit of forgiveness. “But don’t you see, I can be your… diplomat. Voldemort needed someone in the Ministry, and so did you. And I only made decisions you all agreed on.”

A long pause. “You did what you thought was right,” Lupin said carefully. “We knew you were working with someone. We let the Ministry appointment go through to better understand whose interests you had been advocating for, particularly. That you would even propose that you join the Ministry , of all things….” He shook his head, bemused.

“I thought the Order would want a puppet,” Harry attempted. “Without taking away anyone who’s, you know, already doing something useful.”

Remus stared at him, first taken aback and then a bit sad. “You’ve done enough,” he said. “Nor is the Ministry the best way to do anything, really. But you piqued Moody’s interest enough that he let your appointment through, to see what you were on about. And then the marginalia you left on some of that legislation, well….” A crooked smile. “Enough of us have been your teachers to know that’s not how you write. Though the documents we passed you were only trials, to judge who might be mentoring you. It has always been a sinecurial position, anyway,” he concluded wryly.

God, he hadn’t even kept up with them, much less outpaced them in his plans. “I was working in everyone’s interests, though,” Harry lamely defended himself. “I don’t know. Isn’t getting peace, making the fighting stop, what everyone wants?”

“Harry… I don’t disagree with you.” Lupin was keeping his tone deliberately gentle. “But you’re a liability. Just to have reached a point that you can trust Voldemort…. Some people don’t know who you are anymore.”

A punch to the gut. “Right,” he said, unable to think of anything further. “You’re right.” There was a long moment of nauseating silence.

“What will you be needing?” Lupin asked, in an attempt to fix the broken atmosphere. “I could come by, a few times a week. Would you cook?” he asked in an afterthought. “Molly baked for you, they didn’t know….”

“I would. Tell her thanks. Uh, can I have magic?” At Lupin’s skeptical look, Harry rushed on: “It’s the windows. Or lack of them, really. If I could even have the illusion of an outside….”

“I didn’t know you were claustrophobic,” Lupin said, with mild curiosity.

“I grew up in a cupboard.”

A wince. “Yes. Sorry. I’ll see what I can do. Officially it’d be forbidden, but….”

“Thanks, Professor.” He leaned up against the counter. “Um, and are you keeping Voldemort? Keeping him here, I mean. Instead of in Azkaban.”

Lupin’s lips puckered. “It’s more useful to have him in our possession than in Azkaban, for now.”

“Then, could you revive him? He said there was a crisis coming for the wizards, he didn’t say what. And don’t look at me like that, I’m not daft,” he added. “But you could use the intelligence he’s got.”

He sighed, patience with Harry clearly running a little thin. “Voldemort has caused most of what could be called a crisis for English wizards. Best to leave him as he is.”

They wouldn’t revive him. Harry’s insides were freezing. “It’s like living with a corpse,” he said bluntly. “You need to do something.”

Another awful long moment. “Do something for whom, really?”

“Look, Voldemort would probably rather die than be captured, so if that’s what you want anyway….” Harry made a broad gesture.

Remus stared at him, unimpressed. “He is neutralized. The Order now has other business to which to attend before we arrange for his trial.” His hands went through his hair in agitation. “There’s a lot of… well, there are more urgent conflicts. I’m afraid I can’t tell you much,” he repeated apologetically. “I had to convince Moody to even let me drop by. Any sort of supplies, requests…. It’s harder since we can’t simply magic communication in and out.”

He was trying hard to keep it civil, Harry could tell, but he was too agitated to be appreciative at the moment. He shook his head. “Just magic. And news, as often as possible.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Taking out a notepad, Lupin returned to the pantry. Harry slunk away.

 

But Lupin was even better than his word: the next morning, he must’ve stopped by, because three vials of shimmery silver essence stood on the island. Attached were instructions: Harry would have to use a makeshift wand, dipping in the tip. Taking a chopstick, he set to casting illusions on the wall. With bright tropical scenes outside, because why the hell not. Working methodically, he ended up on the top floor, in the room where he’d stashed Voldemort.

Still immobile, still sallow and waxy. There was a bottle and a half of magic still left over, with the windows done. Lupin had indicated these should last a few days, for things like cooking or harmless distraction. Nothing like escaping, nor was that paramount to him at the moment. So he knelt, unbuttoning Voldemort’s robes.

Dabs of magic at the pulse points seemed to do nothing, not like Wadha’s potions had. “Git,” Harry said, massaging the solution in with both thumbs. “I’ve lost everything because of you, at least don’t let me be alone….” He upended the rest of a vial on Voldemort’s chest – his breathing was _so_ shallow – and rubbed that in as well.

And with that, a twitch. No, a _flinch_ – he saw a flash of pain in Voldemort’s face. “Voldemort,” he said over him. “Are you awake?” He grabbed his shoulders. “Can you hear me?”

Without warning, with even opening his eyes, Voldemort reached upward, grabbing Harry’s forearms so that his claws sunk in. “ _What have you done_?” he demanded. His voice was rusty and small.

“Nothing.” Harry couldn’t shake him off. “I mean, everything’s fucked, but I didn’t do it. Are you hurt?”

Claws, deeper, until Harry yelped. “How long had you been planning this? Exploiting my only weakness, I should have you killed,” he hissed.

“Listen – _ow_ ,” Harry insisted, prying Voldemort’s hands off him. “This wasn’t my plan. I’m just as trapped as you.”

A frown. “By whom?”

“Uh.” Voldemort already knew of their existence, he supposed. “By the Order. They, um, suspected that I was listening to someone else. So they broke in.”

A long pause, long enough that he thought Voldemort might have fallen unconscious again. “And just coincidentally construct a magic-free prison?”

“It’s not a prison, it’s a tower. I think,” Harry said uselessly. “I did mention… you at Hogwarts. I didn’t know they’d use it like this.”

“ Idiot .” Voldemort tried to sit up, to better rage at him apparently, but had too hard a time of it. At least his eyes were open now, gaze looking especially red. He glared at Harry. “I’ll kill every Order member who shows their face, and I’ll do it without magic. You’ll be last.”

“But – I’m here too. They can’t trust me anymore. Isn’t that punishment enough?”

Another glare from Voldemort. “What does that matter, how _bad_ you feel?”

“I know you care.” Harry stood. “I’ll make tea. Don’t fall asleep, it used a lot of magic to wake you up.”

By the time he brought tea up to Voldemort’s room, he seemed to have processed this all a bit better. And, thank god, some of his color was returning. He sat up enough to sip from the cup. “Did you ask for a newspaper?”

“I did. Lupin will be back in a few days, maybe he’ll bring one then.” He took a seat by the foot of the bed. “But he also said that he can’t tell me much about the outside. That I’m a liability.”

Voldemort inclined his head. “You are. But I need a newspaper. What sort of contact are they maintaining?”

“That’s it, Lupin said he’d be by. The whole house is non-magical too. He’ll be giving me those vials so I can, like, cook. That’s all.”

“Mm.” Voldemort held the last vial of magic to the light. “It’s good work. Snape, by chance?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I woke you up because I didn’t know what to do next.”

Voldemort sipped his tea, considering. “Next you learn to Apparate,” he said. “And remove us from this infernal place.”

Harry suppressed a sigh. “And you? Nothing difficult, or magic,” he added. “I swear, reviving you.”

Voldemort flashed him a glare. “I apologize for being such a great burden on you.” Harry shrugged.

 

No matter how many times a day Harry recharmed the windows for a different faux-outdoors scene, the place still seemed to be consuming them alive, a horrible stone digestion. He had to revive Voldemort every few days, finding him sprawled unnaturally in bed on these mornings. Every time, he considered just… leaving him unconscious. To be shipped off to trial and then to Azkaban. But the thought of being alone, physically and without anyone else who would understand how those few previous months had gone, terrified him into keeping Voldemort around. And Remus brought by supplies for him often enough. But anyway, he’d gotten away with the revivals of Voldemort for longer than he really should have. And the day the Order caught him, they found Voldemort first.

Specifically, the morning started with the clang of a door knocker (all faked, the magic sounds covering Order members’ noises when entering) and Remus’s voice calling out, “Hello?” That was normal. What wasn’t normal was that Voldemort was downstairs early that morning, making tea. Before Harry had realized that, there was the clunk of the kettle hitting stone. Tonks’s scream reverberated as Harry ran downstairs.

Fucking chaos – water spattered everyone, Remus and Tonks poised at one side of the counter island with Voldemort on the other. “ Wait – _shit_ – “ Harry hurled himself at the scene, fumbling for a vial of magic. Without thinking, he dumped the vial into his hands and flung the silver liquid up and across the room, stringing a magical barrier between the parties. He dug his fingers into the strands, took a seat at the end of the island, and tried to keep his voice light: “Let’s all have a chat, shall we?”

All three of them glared at him. Tonks still had wand pointed at Voldemort – uselessly, as she must have felt the magic drought in the building, but when she plunged the tip into the matrix of magic that Harry had suspended, he tightened his grip, unwilling to let her have it. She shot him a brief and angry look of surprise before turning back to Voldemort. “We were keeping you in _stasis_. We were going to take you to _trial_. Better’n you deserve and better than you treated Potter’s parents.” She waved the wand toward Harry.

“Sit down… please?” he tried ineffectually.

“Your ‘Order’ will drive the wizarding world to extinction,” Voldemort sneered. “Potter, just make them go.”

“No – look – _sit down_.” He summoned the most imposing voice, to no effect. He went on anyway: “Something has to change. That’s why I’m here. To broker peace.” The slightest release of tension, he thought. “Voldemort said he had intelligence that needs to be acted on.” He nodded him over.

Remus was being slightly propped up by Tonks. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am, actually.” He beckoned them again. When they were all four seated, he nodded to Voldemort. “What?”

“What am I exchanging the intelligence for, exactly?”

“World peace, you git.”

But Tonks inserted herself: “Depends on its value, ‘course. But we – the Aurors – have license to negotiate.”

Sagging a bit, Harry realized they’d have this conversation without him. He held the barrier taut and let them talk.

Voldemort, looking defeated in his own awful way, still looked hard at them. “The Muggles are amassing.”

Tonks let out a snort. “Of course.”

“Look to London,” he addressed her coldly. “Dublin, next week. Probably the States, by now. Too much magic in the air, too many loose tongues close to government officials. They’ve always known of wizards in small numbers – Mudblood parents and the like – but there’s finally to be something of a panic. And then an exploitation.”

“And you know this because…”

A cold grimace. “Oh, they’re already preparing _camps_.”

A thick, nauseous silence. Harry spoke first. “How many wizards would it take to stop them?”

Voldemort shook his head. “Unknown, right now.”

Tonks. “And you expect it to begin…?”

Voldemort hissed through his sharp teeth. “I couldn’t say that without any indication of time in this prison, really.”

“Today is Candlemas,” Remus supplied.

Harry saw it – perhaps the others didn’t – but Voldemort’s face briefly registered a sick surprise. “Oh,” he said. “Any day now, I’d imagine.”

 

Remus and Tonks departed with promises to check with their intel. Nobody talked about what it all may mean for Voldemort’s fate, or Harry’s himself. After the worst goodbye ever, the pair breezed through a wall, letting themselves out. And though Harry mostly wanted to hurl himself at that same wall immediately, his most important task now was to stay with Voldemort. To protect Voldemort. Christ.

Voldemort had picked up the iron kettle and restarted tea. “Well?”

“This is horrible,” Harry said scrubbing his face with both hands. “Was that all true?”

Voldemort glared at him. “Yes.”

“Then, if it comes to it… would you fight with us?”

“Would I?” Voldemort mused. “I imagine your side would have a lot to say about my treatment of Muggles.”

“Oh, yeah.” Harry split a scone and settled at the counter once more.

“I did have reliable intel,” Voldemort added. “The prophecies confirmed it, for one. And a very good source… when I last spoke to her a month ago,” he added, his face darkening.

“Whatever. They’ve got good reason to just lock us away, really.”

Voldemort hissed. “You consent to all of your oppressions, Potter, you realize that?” He poured them both tea.

“Yeah, I know.” He grabbed the edge of Voldemort’s sleeve, pulling him to a stool. “Just… if you’re acting in good faith, I’ll do everything I can to protect you. That’s it.”

A moment’s pause; Voldemort tried again. “I didn’t want to say as much, but we might need the entire magic population of Britain. If things develop as I suspect they will. In which case, yes, I’d need assistance from the others.” He sipped at the teacup. “Can’t quite let the Muggles exterminate us all otherwise.”

 

Harry couldn’t celebrate his success in diplomacy for long. “Potter!” Voldemort called from downstairs too late in the night – early in the morning? – a week later. “I need your magic!”

Harry heaved himself out of bed. “Can I dress?” he called down.

“No!”

For once, Voldemort wasn’t being dramatic or obstreperous. He had scrawled runes all down the walls through which the Order entered, and was holding a crack open with one sharp finger. “ Harry ,” he hissed.

When Harry touched the crack, he felt a pulse of magic rush through it, and then a violent zap through his flesh, like grounding a live wire. But they’d apparently short-circuited the security, because then the wall crumbled under their palms.

Voldemort made a noise of satisfaction. “Do you need anything?” he asked perfunctorily. “We need to go.”

“ Now can I get dressed?” Voldemort motioned him hurriedly.

But when they stepped beyond the fortress, it took a bit for Harry to even register what they were looking at. Flat circular platforms hovered in midair, with the transparent tubes running through them in to the voids above and below. Everything was pulsating shades of blue, and nauseating, and strange.

Voldemort had stiffened at the sight. “They’ve already taken them.” His voice was flat. “All of England, at least.” He pushed Harry across the overlapping platforms, weaving through the tubes like trees. “This is, mm, the mechanism of Apparation. A plane between planes. I’d only read of it before, but it’s unmistakable….” Voldemort slowed in front of a tube that looked like all the rest, but apparently was a particular one. “This tube should end up in the central corridor of the Ministry.” At Harry’s look, he apparently relented. “As you still have not learned Apparation, I’ll join you.” He took Harry by the shoulders, guiding them both into the tube, and they were whisked away.

 

Harry’s knees landed hard on the stone. “ _Ow_ , bloody hell.” His eyes were still closed when he heard something else clatter before him, something he thought Voldemort had dropped.

But no, there was his wand. And Voldemort’s, tied together in an orange bow, having apparently dropped from the ceiling as he arrived. He glanced up uselessly; but of course it’d been charmed to happen that way. “Hey, Vol – “

But there was a scrap of parchment tucked under the ribbon. Uncurling it: _Come to Durham quickly_.

Voldemort had had his guard up, paying little attention to Harry until he pressed his wand and the parchment into his hand. “This is bad, isn’t it. Are we too late?”

He didn’t actually want that question answered, nor did Voldemort, though he read the parchment. “County Durham, then,” he murmured. “Nasty place. I had hoped the Muggles would choose one of their nicer options for the camp….”

Harry stared at him. “We should go.” At Voldemort’s look at Harry reaching for his hand, he sighed in frustration. “I’ll learn Apparation, this just isn’t the time – “

“Not that.” Voldemort raised his brows. “Do you have a plan? And,” his face contorted with a bit of shame, “do you have a vial of magic?”

“Of course. Not the plan, but there’s still one vial – “ Harry proffered it, and chose to look away as Voldemort doused himself. “Do you know anything about the camp?”

“Their PM was considering an abandoned sanatorium up there. It’s a holding ground really, until their politicians have pledged all of their promises.”

“And then…?”

Voldemort grimaced. “Then my contact either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell what would happen next.”

 

Voldemort had enough sense of the hospital’s location to Apparate them just beyond the grounds. The building was the color of a bruise, barely illuminated by the weak rays of dawn, and the only people in sight were stock-still soldiers at the door.

Voldemort pressed himself against a tree, shielding them from view. “I can disguise myself as a guard. You’re a stray that I’m delivering.”

Harry resisted a sigh. “And when I’m inside?”

“Find your Order. Gather information. I’ll find you when I need you.”

“Will you?” Harry challenged. “With apparently all of Britain in there?”

A dark smile. “I always have been able to before, haven’t I? Also, you’d best conceal your wand while you’re inside. Do you know how?”

“Yes,” Harry said in irritation, invisibly anchoring his wand to his forearm.

Voldemort gave him another shamed look. “Do mine, then, as well.” He held out his bony forearm, and his wand.

Harry looked up curiously as he anchored the wand. “You can’t?”

“I must conserve my magic.”

 _To survive_ , neither of them added. Harry plucked a reed and, with a flourish, transformed it into a chain. “Around my wrists?” he suggested.

Voldemort raised his eyebrows. “Around your throat.” And even though the resulting illusion was identical to the fucking collar Voldemort had forced him into in Abdiah, Harry didn’t protest – a testament, he thought, to his good faith and cooperation. When the chain looked like a secure enough illusion, Voldemort took the end. With one hand he transformed his cloak into the guards’ uniform; Harry looked away at the wince this provoked.

“I’ve found a straggler,” Voldemort introduced him at the door. (The guards didn’t look at him at all – which meant the place must be crawling with them, that they wouldn’t all know one another. Sod it.)

“Wand?” the stockier one asked Harry, eyeing him warily.

“No,” Harry shook his head. “No time to get it.” And after a thorough patdown, and maybe a _bit_ of a persuasion charm, the soldier shrugged. “Get your blood taken in the morning,” he muttered, before ushering them both in.

When they were alone in the grungy halls, Voldemort glanced backward. “If they’re all who are keeping the wizards from freedom, I’ll just kill them now.”

“Well, them and the rest of the military, yes.” Harry tried to straighten up, to look confident or dependable. “I’ll find the Order.”

“Yes, you will.” Already Voldemort seemed distracted.

 

The wizards were eight or ten to a room, huddled on bunks or occasionally the floor. With immense luck, the first familiar faces he found were the Weasleys, the men asleep with Molly, Hermione, and Ginny still up, their heads close together. When Harry stepped into the room, Molly gasped. “Arthur! Ron! Boys!” she hissed, and then somehow he was immediately crushed in a Weasley hug. He felt warm inside. Wanted.

At least, until they pulled back and Ron wheeled around, connecting with his jaw with an excellent backhand. “You _left_ us, you _lied_ to us, you _betrayed_ us,” he accused, echoing his mother’s angriest tone. “And now you come back.”

Harry swallowed the taste of blood. “Yeah. I deserved that.” Ron relaxed slightly, apparently vindicated. “We’re trying to help. The wizarding world, all of it, is too small to take this on in factions. So… what have I missed?”

A strange mix of joy and betrayal underscored the way they spoke to him. Fair enough. The camp was a holding cell, as Voldemort had said. Each of them had been profiled when they entered (hence the guard telling him to get blood drawn), and had their wands forcibly taken, and… that was it. The soldiers would tell them nothing, and apparently news of their captivity hadn’t reached the Muggle public in any fashion yet. “So we just… wait,” Ginny concluded, frowning. “We’ve sent people looking for the plans, tried bribing the guards. There’s nothing around for miles, so without magic….” Her thought trailed off with a sigh.

“Most wizards are incredibly useless without magic,” Fred agreed. “And their soldiers….” He pushed his shaggy hair back, revealing a black eye and a swollen ridge on his brow. “Not all of us get such telegenic scars. I’m fine,” he added at Harry’s horrified look. “Just a warning that any mischief around here ends in a walloping. Sometimes with the butt of their guns. It doesn’t really control anything, it’s just all they know.”

Harry allowed himself just a moment to sit back against the bedframe, taking this in. “What can I do? I’ve got my wand,” he said, pushing up his sleeve just high enough to reveal it anchored to his forearm. “Somebody else should take it. I’ve been trying out wandless magic anyway, it’ll be good practice….” He was babbling. “But with the magical drought they’ve cast on this place… whoever _they_ are. Wizards working with the Muggles. Or being coerced by them, whichever.”

Arthur, frowning hard to keep up with his stupid stream of thought, shook his head. “We haven’t been here long enough to account for everyone,” he said. “Pass your wand on to one of our Aurors, they could do a lot of good – “

“Wait, wandless magic?” Ron interrupted his father. “You’ve got to show us. Are you, y’know, good at it?”

Yeah, this was what he’d come here for. This felt right, training up his friends. Saving the world, if a little more indirectly. “I’m okay at it,” he said cautiously. “Here, I’ll show you.” The air, dry and devoid of much magic, crackled like static electricity as he stretched open his palms. _God, let it be enough_.

 

The compound functioned like a prison, Harry discovered over the next few days: those who could cook or do laundry or clean without magic were assigned to said tasks; and armed guards would patrol rooms and the cafeteria and toilets, breaking up suspicious-sounding conversations; and he’d even heard murmurs of a solitary confinement ward, elsewhere in the building. Still, there seemed to be a sort of… stasis about it all. What _did_ they want?

He didn’t see Voldemort again for nearly a week – or so he thought, with no timepieces and few windows in this awful building. But late one night, he was pacing the halls, trying to will away the gnawing in the pit of his stomach. And most of the soldiers were patrolling in groups of two or three; but after a time, one with taut shoulders, a drawn mouth, and slicked 1950s hair rounded the corner alone. Harry locked eyes and they subtly drew together into a shadowy alcove.

“Nobody wears their hair like that anymore,” Harry murmured to Voldemort (who was still thoroughly Glamoured) when they were alone together.

“I do,” Voldemort replied. Sorting through a bulging keyring, he nodded to a door down the hall. “That leads to the cellar. When the hallway is clear, follow.” And after a few faux-nonchalant minutes, Harry did.

He found Voldemort seated halfway down the staircase, a magical bauble of light floating above him, and his Glamour spell dropped. Harry closed the door a bit too forcefully, before anyone might come by to find them. And then he took an adjacent seat. “What’ve you found out?”

“Slave auctions,” Voldemort said bluntly. “Of _course_ they would auction us off, scatter us and destroy us. Put our magic toward _housework_.” His face was snarled with hatred, a look that Harry hadn’t seen on him in months.

“That can’t be – I mean – “ Harry fumbled at Voldemort’s vicious look. “The Order thought it was for research. Science, I mean. It’s why they’re taking blood samples. To find out where magic comes from.”

“Or eugenics,” Voldemort supplied. “I imagine they’d have enough wizards to do both. Their PM hasn’t gone public yet. He doesn’t seem to know how to, without causing a panic. So they haven’t established a timeline, at least.”

He was as resigned as he was furious, and it terrified Harry. But he forced himself to sound calm, anyway: “What do we do next, then?”

Voldemort frowned at him, this time not unhappy but merely thoughtful. “Would you be able to teach wandless magic to others?”

“Oh, yeah!” He felt an inappropriate thrill that he’d done something right. “I have been, a bit. It’s slow, though, the way the guards are watching.”

Voldemort gave him a bemused look. “Really, there are any number of spells… barriers, and distractions, and invisibility…. Though it does seem somebody’s placed a magical drought on this building,” he added.

“I noticed. Who would do that?” Harry asked. Then, catching up with the request Voldemort was actually making of him: “Here, let me give you my magic.” The motion was second nature to him by now: he opened both hands wide, moving his fingers as though gathering wool.

“Thank you.” Voldemort sounded only slightly annoyed that it took Harry a moment to catch his implication. “And I haven’t heard yet. Scabs. Race traitors.”

“I’ve asked, but this all is so big, we can’t account for everyone anyway.” Harry thought through it. “Have you noticed anyone missing? Any families, or whatever? Most of the Order has found each other, and most of the students….”

Voldemort’s frown etched deeper into his face. “Only the Death Eaters.”

Oh, shit. “Uh, all of them?”

“I haven’t found _any of them_ , so I suppose so,” Voldemort said testily. “Except for Snape, crawling after that werewolf, what’s his name.”

“Professor Lupin,” Harry supplied automatically. And he’d never have imagined he’d be relieved to hear that Snape was around, but (his stomach clenching at the thought) at least he hadn’t been left for dead when the rest of the wizarding world was taken. “Here.” His palms were full of warm and heavy magic, and when he took Voldemort’s hands, the discharge was electrifying. He rubbed in the remnants in circles with his thumbs, oddly enjoying the contact.

Voldemort relaxed fractionally once he had a reserve of magic again, and Harry suppressed the question of how long he’d be able to sustain Voldemort like this.  “I could slow down the process, if not sabotage it. But long-term….” His voice dropped off precipitously.

“Right. I’ll ask around, talk to the Order.” The stupidest idea came to him. “Unless you’d rather I bring you to them myself, if you think it would help….”

Voldemort seemed to shudder at that prospect. “Unlike Snape, I am nobody’s ward, least of all yours. Just collect their ideas, and teach them magic. I’ll find you again when I need you.” His face once again had color in it, and he moved more confidently when he stood, and still Harry had to stop himself from pushing more magic into his slender, serpentine hands.

 

The dining room was filled with cold metal tables and benches and guards at all hours, but still proved to be the best place for quiet meetings among Order members (if only a few at once, to keep the guards from recognizing their numbers). “They want us for slavery,” Harry was explaining in a low voice early the next morning to Moody and Tonks. “Domestic help. The PM just doesn’t know how to make it public yet.”

Tonks was spinning strands of magic like a glowing cat’s cradle between her fingers (as Harry had been showing them all, to varying degrees of success). “That’s bold of them,” she said with a frown. “D’they plan to keep us at gunpoint forever, or…?”

Moody’s magical eye was trained on the pair of guards stationed at the doorway (though even his eye moved slower, with the decreased magic in the hospital). “They’ve already found colluders to sap the magic out of the air here. No reason the same wizards couldn’t maintain Imperio, obliging the rest of us to the Muggles.” After apparently working out that line of reasoning in his head, he growled, “We need Snape.” His eye spun backwards, peering through the walls.

Harry felt his throat close. “You think it’s the Death Eaters?”

Tonks snorted. “They’re the only ones missing,” she said, taking up his line of questioning. “We only didn’t have a motive before. Of _course_ , awful bastards.”

“But then the blood samples…. Voldemort said it was eugenics….”

There was a thick silence following his words – he hadn’t exactly confirmed that he had still be in contact with Voldemort, but…. Bugger. He braced himself for whichever awful question they’d ask first.

Tonks pursed her lips. “No, it’d be an unbreakable vow,” she said after a moment, sharing a dark look with Moody. “They haven’t got to sustain Imperio if they have wizards to craft blood magic into a vow.”

Moody frowned at Harry, however. “Voldemort?” he grumbled, his eyebrows knitted together.

Harry suppressed a sigh and fished for an appropriate lie. “He’s… around. Sometimes. But he hates this, he wouldn’t have put the Death Eaters up to it all. He really just wants – “

Moody cut him off: “I’m aware what he wants. We’ve been protecting the wizarding world from _what he wants_ for longer than you’ve been alive.”

God. “Right. Sorry.”

“However…” Moody’s expression flickered thoughtfully, “for as long as you’re his contact, pry him for what he knows about the Death Eaters’ movements.”

“Nothing, I think. He seems really upset, at least….”

“Snape!” Partway through, Moody had jumped up, his magical eye finally finding Snape through the walls. Harry and Tonks were left to wait.

So Tonks leaned in to him, her face creased in a frown. “You’re in over yer head, you know,” she murmured.

Harry bit back a laugh, having thought that to himself every moment of every day recently. “I know, I swear.”

“And the Order’s tried protecting you a hundred times over….”

Harry flinched. “I know,” he could only repeat. “I’m sorry. Please don’t, anymore. He… Voldemort won’t hurt me. Or if he does, I’ll know I’ve had it coming.”

Tonks rocked back in her seat, her face paled. “Harry….”

But they were interrupted by Moody’s return, followed by Lupin and Snape. Both looked thoroughly defeated, in their own way: Lupin with dark rings under his eyes, belying his mouth set in a hard line; and Snape rarely averting his gaze from the ground. Harry felt sick.

When they both took a seat at the benches, though, Tonks jerked. “We can’t be seen together,” she hissed, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the guard. “If they know we’re together – “

“It’s alright.” With Voldemort’s exasperation with him still fresh, Harry found enough magic to cast an invisibility spell, and draped it over them all like a blanket.

They all looked at him with varying degrees of shock. “Ah, wandless magic, when you get the hang of it, I think it’s becoming easier than wandwork really – “

“Later,” Moody interrupted him. Then, turning abruptly to Snape: “What have the Death Eaters done?”

Snape sucked his front teeth, looking more sallow than usual. “I haven’t seen them.” His voice sounded rough and unused.

“That’s the _point_ ,” Moody hissed. “Who else would collude in this. _Find them_.”

“But – “ Harry hated to come to Snape’s rescue, but he couldn’t _not_. “Voldemort hates this too. Why would he want wizards to all be enslaved by Muggles?” His question, though mostly rhetorical, was met with unimpressed silence.

Lupin finally spoke: “Voldemort has been imprisoned by the Order for weeks. As you know.” He shot Harry a wry glance. “We shouldn’t assume that he’s acting in tandem with the Death Eaters at the moment. Or,” he caught himself, “if the Death Eaters are involved at all. But it does look that way.”

“Then who’s second in command?” Tonks addressed Snape.

Snape made a choking noise. “It’s not like that.” The sucking silence following his answer compelled him to continue: “Find their families, then. Find their children. _Threaten_ their children, if you’d like. But I know nothing.”

Remus leaned in such a way as to nearly shield Snape. “Right,” he said. “Harry, we’re going to need all your tricks if we’ve got any chance of overpowering the leadership here.”

 _God bless you, Remus_.

When they broke, everyone left with their assignments: Tonks would seek out her connections to the Black family; Moody would seek out his darker Auror connections; Snape would lead Remus to the Slytherins. Harry was entrusted with nothing, and that seemed fair enough. He slunk away, untrusted.

 

He spent the better part of a week teaching the Order, and whatever members of Dumbledore’s Army he could find, wandless magic. They were desperate for magic of any kind, for one; and once they had worked up silencing and invisibility spells, plotting could happen in a way that it hadn’t been able to before. Luna turned out to be his best ally in this endeavor. “You know what it feels like to walk through a cobweb?” she addressed a small crowd in an undertone, late one night. “Magic feels like that.”

Harry stepped out, satisfied that Luna would be able to direct them on her own. And he should’ve slept, really, but he was restless. So he paced the broad circle of the ground floor, alert for allies and other familiar faces.

Or a _too_ -familiar face – he bit back a gasp as Voldemort rounded the corner out of darkness. Not his typical Glamoured disguise but _himself_ , tall and pale and inhuman. “Finally.” His voice was raspy. He pushed a cold set of keys into Harry’s hands. “The doorway behind you, that’s where they’ve set up solitary confinement. We can speak there.”

“What – “ He could only fumble with his words, seeing Voldemort so drained. “What’s happened – “

“ _Go_.” Voldemort shoved him backwards. Together they found the appropriate key to enter the wing, and stumbled into the mildewy darkness.

Once the door was shut behind them, Voldemort shuddered. “I’m dying.”

“You’re not.” Alarmed, he caught Voldemort’s wilting form, offering himself up as a prop as they strode along the corridor. “I mean, no more than anyone. One of these – ?” He nodded to the doors in front of them, porthole windows in their doors scratched up and foggy.

“Yes.” Voldemort took the keys from him to find the right one. His hands shook, scraping the key unsuccessfully against the lock mechanism, and the sound was impossibly loud. “Dammit, I can’t – “

“It’s okay, it’s dark.” Harry caught Voldemort’s hand between his own, guiding it to the lock.

Inside was a bed and a bare lightbulb, but it was enough. Harry cast Engorgio on the bed, making it wide enough for them both, adding a few textural spells for comfort. He lowered Voldemort onto the sheets, sitting opposite him. “Have you slept?” he asked in a hopefully-tactful tone.

Voldemort looked at him with hollow eyes. “You said it was becoming harder to wake me up.”

Mother of God. “Right. Look, I’ll give you magic, and you can sleep here, and I’ll promise that you wake up.” He didn’t mention to Voldemort, as he began collecting magic out of the air, that stray magic seemed scarcer now than it ever had before.

Instead he tried conversation: “If the Death Eaters are working with the Muggle leaders… who would be making those decisions?” (He shoved away the subconscious hope that Voldemort would be delirious enough to answer this candidly).

“Is that what you’ve heard?”

Harry shrugged. “It seems obvious. It’s what the Order has settled on, anyway.”

“Mm.”

Voldemort sounded _awful_ , and Harry shot a glare over his shoulder. “Why didn’t you find me earlier?”

“Don’t,” Voldemort sighed. “I needed to know whether wizards might be able to build tolerance – or resistance,” he added, after a pause to catch his breath, “to magic-depleted spaces. As it seems to be a favorite tactic these days. And if the void has affected me first, it will affect others soon enough. Probably in descending order of power.”

“Do they know that?”

“The wizards, or the Muggles? … No matter,” he said after a moment, “as apparently not, either of them. Rather insidious, for a coincidental effect.” He hungrily watched the way Harry’s hands moved.

Harry rolled the invisible warm magic between his fingertips. “I’m probably making it worse. Everyone’s learning wandless magic here, and using it all up. If that’s even how physical magic works….”

“Not particularly, no.”

Harry forged on, desperate to fill the room with normalcy. “But I don’t understand. When I’m handing off magic, or holding it between us… it feels different with everybody else. It’s easier for me to give you my magic than anybody else. Everyone else takes _effort_. You don’t even need runes.” He looked back curiously at Voldemort. “So what’d you do?”

Voldemort gave him a skeptical (if exhausted) look. “I assume you’re impatient with hearing that we share a unique connection….”

“But you seemed so surprised that I could share my magic,” Harry forged on. “It feels so… natural. Or complete. What is it, _exactly_?”

The flicker of emotion on Voldemort’s face was enough: he pulled the growing ball of magic out of Voldemort’s reach, glowering. “ _What?_ ”

And then Voldemort lunged, pushing him backwards on the bed until he was sprawled flat with his arms stretched high above his head, his legs bent double to hold Voldemort apart from the ball of magic. Blindly, Harry hurled it at him, attempting to lasso him in some absurd way. With a strangled cry, Voldemort clambered off him and Harry dared to look up – to find Voldemort’s forearms braided together from the elbow with golden strands of magic. And though Voldemort tugged at them, he was thoroughly stuck. Harry’s stomach clenched at the awful helplessness of it all.

Voldemort gave him an angry, defeated look. “It was nothing you would have wanted to know,” he said. “And only conjectures. As though you have the perspective to determine what’s in your best interest, anyway….”

Voldemort’s anger only confirmed Harry’s suspicions, that some vital information was being kept from him. “Go on,” he said. “And then I’ll let you have it.”

Voldemort considered. “In addition to being able to pass magic between us,” he said carefully, “there’s a persistent current. Especially in magic-deprived areas.”

“Like this.” Harry felt stupid for not recognizing it. “Like now?”

To demonstrate, Voldemort hovered his bound hands a few inches above Harry’s crossed legs – the air between them buzzed. “Oh,” he said stupidly.

“So I could always find you, when I wished. I assumed you could feel the same. Though if you weren’t anticipating it….” Voldemort shrugged his bony shoulders.

He struggled for a response to that. _No, this is all new to me. I’ve never been magically connected to a Dark Lord before._ He opted for a nod.

“And that your presence itself seems to be medicinal,” Voldemort listed off. “And that your magic seems more effective than any others’. And that when I was working with blood magic, on the potion, I found myself consistently having to correct for how similar your magical imprint was to my own….”

Harry looked on, still not comprehending. “We’re related?” he guessed, feeling dumb.

“No. Well, probably, at some point, as most wizarding families are, but that’s not significant.” At Harry’s persistent blank look, Voldemort hissed a sigh between his sharpened teeth. “Tell me what you know of Horcruxes, Harry.”

“Oh.” The statement hit him fully, embodied. “Oh _fuck_ ,” he gasped, rocked backwards. “I mean, not much, only what Dumbledore had mentioned….” He couldn’t maintain the concentration of the bonds around Voldemort’s wrists, and they dissolved into his skin. Voldemort straightened up, some color back in his face. It hadn’t been fun anymore, anyway, having that awful power over him. He sat stock-still, in shock.

“I could tell you more, if you promise not to divulge it to anyone else. You seem to have made a habit of revealing inconvenient things to your _Order_.” Voldemort let the word drip venomously from his tongue.

Did he even want to know more? “I promise.”

Voldemort gave him an impatient look. “No, properly. Like wizards.” He pressed their palms together. “Say it again.”

“You git, you’re using magic on _this_?” Dangerous silence. “Fine, yes, I promise.” An unpleasant sensation like a flash freezing moved between their hands, and then Voldemort shook him off.

“If you attempt to relay any of this, the spell will suffocate you,” Voldemort warned him. ( _Paranoid git,_ a thought which Harry kept to himself.)

“I didn’t intend for you to be a Horcrux,” Voldemort went on, speaking lowly to him now, seriously. “Nobody knew that a human being _could_ serve as a Horcrux. But every way that your magic interacts with my own….”

“For certain?”

“No, of course not.” Voldemort bared his teeth in a wry smile. “But I did warn you, that I would keep you around as a reservoir of magic, if I could.”

“Right.” He failed to see the humor. “So… what does that mean, exactly?”

“Which bit of it?” Harry shrugged. “Well.” A long silence, as Voldemort formulated what he wanted to say: “If you are a Horcrux – or something analogous to one, if embodied in a human – then I wouldn’t die unless you die as well. And vice versa. It’s a sort of guarantor on souls, do you see? It wasn’t supposed to happen. I don’t – I didn’t know,” he stumbled over his explanation.

“And for now?”

Voldemort gave him the worst, most vulnerable look. “Just… stay nearby. It’s better that way. For you as well, as I’m not certain what would happen to you if….” _If I died_ were words clearly too horrible for Voldemort to utter aloud, but his point was made.

Harry swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “Right. Of course.” He felt as though he’d been kicked in the chest, his lungs collapsed so he could no longer properly breathe. “And in return for keeping you alive?” (He was working on ‘leverage’ right now. Even if his heart wasn’t in it.)

Voldemort shot him another withering look. “In return, I am saving the _entire British wizarding world_ ,” he hissed. “I could just go, find another of my Horcruxes, and leave – “

“You should,” Harry interrupted. “I mean, not all that, but you should find a Horcrux. If it’ll, you know, keep you alive.” At Voldemort’s calculating look, he added, “I could come with you, if you need me to. If that’d work.”

A silence, considering, then Voldemort answered: “You need to remain here, to teach the others magic. You _have_ been teaching them magic?”

“Hogwarts, the Order, their families….” A good number, now, looking back on it. “We should be ready, when you want to launch something.”

“Do that,” Voldemort nodded. He looked into the distance (inasmuch as this tiny square cell had ‘distance’), considering. “There hasn’t been any official timeline or launch date for enslavement,” he said. “Everything is behind encryption in the terminals, and magic with technology….” He shrugged. (Harry assumed Voldemort had blown up a few computers before figuring that out.)  “So you’ll need to corner an officer, get information out of him. He must be killed afterward, of course.”

“But – “ Harry began to protest.

Again Voldemort hissed a sigh through his teeth. “His death, or the _enslavement of the entire wizarding community of Britain_. Honestly. Make Moody do it; he’s killed people for less before.”

Again Harry fought back impending nausea. “And what will you do now?”

“Retrieve a Horcrux.” He gave Harry a nod of acknowledgement. “It shouldn’t take long. And then….” He hesitated, and the uncharacteristic gesture made Harry’s stomach drop. “Then I save the world, I suppose.”

He didn’t want to push, didn’t want to interrogate. He dropped his hands onto Voldemort’s, attempting to open the channels of magic to share power freely between them. If his sacrifice was only the sacrifice of his magic to allow Voldemort to save wizarding Britain, well. “Then, just let me stay.” With a wave of two fingers the lights in the cell dimmed. “Take whatever you can take from me.” Pressing his body against Voldemort’s, he slumped into the magically-fluffy mattress. “Whatever you need to save the world.”

It was late, he was exhausted, and all this seemed unbelievable. Nevertheless, the places where their skin touched felt warm and magnetic, and he curled up as close as Voldemort would humor him.

“And Harry?” Voldemort said after a long moment, the words murmured into the back of his neck.

“Hm?”

Strong bony hands gripped his shoulders from behind as Voldemort hissed into his ear, “If you divulge anything about my Horcruxes to anyone, the rest of your life will be very brief, and very painful.”

Well bugger, he was hoping for something more tantalizing than that. Still, he considered it a moment, and let out a laugh. “You could have never killed me,” he concluded, this thought raucously funny after a hard, stupid day. “All those times, and you didn’t know….”

Amazingly, the only reaction on Voldemort’s part was a brief clenching of his hands upon Harry’s shoulders, and then a conscious relaxing of them. “I didn’t,” he said. “But considering how often Dumbledore put you in danger, I can only wonder if _he_ knew. Or at the very least, suspected it.”

Well, that angle was a lot less funny. He chose not to justify it with a response, and instead passive-aggressively rolled over in bed to break the contact of his magic. So there.

 

But when he woke up later, his body and Voldemort’s were intertwined again, Voldemort’s hand heavy on his hip. No, not his hip exactly – he squirmed, still drowsy – Voldemort had nappied him sometime after he’d fallen asleep. And now his hand fell on the padding arched over his hip and waist. It was _wrong_ , but it was comforting and an awful sort of normal. And if he could spend some of his nights like this… well, he just might be able to get through the days.

And Voldemort… who knew what it would take to get Voldemort through the days. He glanced back into his face and saw coils of tension there, even in sleep. _Poor Voldemort_ , he thought, hilariously.

And because he was feeling generous and sad and needy and together, he shimmied farther down the bed, curling a finger beneath the waistband of Voldemort’s long silk pants. He pressed his mouth just beneath Voldemort’s navel, scraping his teeth downward just hard enough to perhaps half-wake him.

Then Harry tugged the waistband down, bit by bit, with his teeth, licking and suckling as he went. Under his tongue he felt tiny goosebumps and shivers, and sucked harder to elicit more of the same. And when he reached Voldemort’s cock, he drew his tongue down its length entirely, finishing with a sucking kiss at the tip.

And at that Voldemort did wake up – enough, at least. Long fingers twisted in his hair. “Harry?” he asked vaguely into the dark.

“Mmhm,” he murmured, before plunging his mouth upon Voldemort’s hardening cock again. And then Voldemort’s legs were wrapped around him, drawing him in close. And _then_ – he could barely gasp around Voldemort’s girth – the Legilimency broke through, and he could feel his mouth around Voldemort’s cock and his own. _Christ_. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, overwhelmed by the intense and recursive sensation, and grabbed at Voldemort’s bony hips as leverage and anchor. And when Voldemort thrust upward, he swallowed greedily, again and again.

It was so obvious now, when he and Voldemort were entwined body and mind, that they were one. That he’d never felt _completed_ in this way before. He gulped deeply, relishing the little humanizing gasps and groans Voldemort made. That he could make him make. He swallowed deeper, shuddering as the sensation was echoed upon his own cock.

The spasms of Voldemort’s hips became too much, or he lost his patience, or whatever, because deep in one swallow Harry felt himself seized, flipped backwards, so that Voldemort could mouthfuck him. All his weight rested on Harry’s chest, pinning him as he thrust, so he could only take gasping breaths in between swallows. One hand stretched Harry’s wrists above his head; the other groped backwards to rub rough circles along the front of his nappy. He was splayed and helpless and it was perfect. And when he pushed his tongue along the sensitive underside of Voldemort’s cock, he had to stifle a cry from feeling it in his own flesh.

The thrusting friction grew hot in his mouth, grew hot between his legs, made his head swim. His own hips spasmed instinctively, slamming his erection against the soft front of his nappy and Voldemort’s teasing strokes. He couldn’t – he couldn’t – At the cresting of his-Voldemort’s- their arousal, his mouth contracted around Voldemort’s cock, a tight o of his lips slipping along the length. It was – _god_ – he arched with a muffled cry as Voldemort shot his load onto the back of his tongue, as he came humiliatingly into the front of his nappy, as he kicked and shuddered in spite of all of Voldemort’s weight holding him down. Instinctively he swallowed, as though even Voldemort’s cum would complete him, fill him. As though they could possibly be any more entangled. His hips bucked of their own accord, as the waves crashed over him again and again, before receding into a warm calm.

In that daze, he couldn’t say how much time elapsed before Voldemort slipped off him, though not bothering to re-dress before pulling the sheets over them both. He even had the courtesy to perform a few cleaning spells – which is when Harry got ahold of himself again. He couldn’t let Voldemort use magic unnecessarily. It’ll kill him, he thought in a groggy panic. “You shouldn’t – I could’ve – “

In spite of his incoherency, Voldemort apparently grasped his sentiment and waved him off. “Even performing spells on you comes more easily,” he said, mostly to himself, it seemed. “Why didn’t I see that earlier.”

God, not even a blowjob could pull him out of this unnerving state. At a loss for anything reasonable to say in response, Harry only curled himself in a ball to fit against Voldemort’s frame as he fell back asleep.

 

Both of them slept fitfully though, and Harry couldn’t even tell whether the anxiety that gnawed at his insides was his own or Voldemort’s (though hopefully his, and hopefully Voldemort couldn’t feel it, because that would just not aid matters). But he wasn’t anticipating that Voldemort would be awake just before dawn, when Harry moved to excuse himself to the toilet.

So he was taken quite by surprise when Voldemort’s arm tightened around his middle. “Stay,” he muttered, holding Harry down against the sheets.

Harry suppressed a childish squirm. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you, I just – “

“You are going to lie here and wet yourself,” Voldemort told him, still holding him down heavily. “Since you’d like to anyway.”

It was stupid, but his breath still hitched at how candid Voldemort could be. “Because you won’t let me up until morning?” he suggested.

“Because I won’t let you up until you’ve pissed yourself empty,” Voldemort hissed into his ear – literally hissed; they’d lapsed into Parseltongue at some point during the night and the sibilant whispers gave him goose pimples. “Do you understand?”

Harry attempted to slip under Voldemort’s grasp, but he held onto Harry’s midsection more insistently. Harry sighed. “I… can’t,” he muttered. He needed a toilet more than he needed an orgasm at the moment (so, quite a bit), and was really more depressed by the day than anything.

The next thing he felt though, was so unexpected he thought he’d mis-interpreted it, but: Voldemort’s Legilimency pushing at the boundaries of his consciousness again. “What do you want?” he asked, bewildered at the magic, scrambling to conjure replacement magic with which to restore Voldemort. He reached his hands high to find any remnants of stray magic in the air.

Voldemort pushed his arms down with a snort, binding them up to Harry’s elbows in a way that made him look absurdly like he was praying. “I want to understand,” he hissed into Harry’s ear, twisting his stomach in two.

And that realization – that Voldemort would also experience every thrill and humiliation, that he couldn’t deny or suppress the shameful things that made him tick – he swallowed at the feeling of a full body blush. Behind him, he felt Voldemort’s mouth, pressed against the back of his neck, curl upwards.

“Harry, really,” he murmured, and they both felt the wrong wrong _wrong_ thrill at Harry’s name in Voldemort’s mouth. “Indulge me.”

But then, with unexpected strength, he pushed Harry onto his stomach, face smashed into one of the dense down pillows he had conjured earlier. “ _Let me help you along_.”

And then he was crushed against the pillow, nose smashed and mouth only gasping in fabric, drying out his mouth. His hands were useless, scrabbling at the level of his chest, but he was kicking backwards at Voldemort as he fought for air. He hit nothing, and he couldn’t shudder off Voldemort’s strong hand on his back, on his skull, smothering him. The instinctual panic made him hyperventilate, made him go hot all over, and then prickly. _The same panic as…._

His vision went dark for a moment, his body limp, and he still had just enough sensation and sense to feel himself dribbling uncontrollably. A desperate moment or two later, Voldemort released him, and as he rolled over, he crushed his thighs together to stem the wetting, poorly. He quivered, drawing deep and ragged breaths.

Voldemort, as though nothing were wrong, reached between his legs from behind to check the nappy casually, pressing the bits of dampness against the head of Harry’s cock, making them both react with the thrill of shame and disgust and arousal. And then: “Again?” he asked.

Harry’s lungs had only just stopped spasming. He had infinitely more reason to believe (experientially) that Voldemort should kill him than not. And yet –

“Yeah.”

This time Voldemort dragged him close, on his side, pressing the pillow into Harry’s face and pressing Harry’s entire body along his own. He threw one leg over Harry’s side, holding him down, pressing him into the bed. Again that prickling panic set in, enough that he would thrash and thrash and _thrash_ against Voldemort’s grip, but not enough to actually push the pillow off his face. He was slick with sweat – thoughts coming in flickers and then bright flashes of color – again the flood between his legs –

and Voldemort pressed the pillow against his face hard with one hand as he plunged his hand into the front of the nappy with the other – though he could only feel the strokes in the increasingly briefer flickers of feeling and consciousness – he was high, euphoric, so worked up with fear that he’d come all the way around – and Voldemort’s fucking hand along his shaft – through the Legilimency he knew piss was still dribbling out of his cock, over his erection and over Voldemort’s hand. It was _wrong, perverse, disgusting, embarrassing_ – and the flush that ran through him at this discovery made him gasp a bit – inhaling nothing, sending a shock through his aching panicked brain. He shuddered harder, unable to resist the sensation of his body going limp.

He emerged from the darkness at the sensation of Voldemort’s wet hand covering his face – _his piss_ , Voldemort was holding his hand, covered in Harry’s piss, against Harry’s face. He lifted his bound hands ineffectually, not enough to push Voldemort away, and god, he couldn’t breathe –the pillow was gone but Voldemort’s hand was wide enough to cover his nose and mouth. He cast a frantic look upward, saw the same flush in Voldemort’s face, saw him flex the arm wrapped around Harry’s head and face, as his lungs burst with little multi-color stars behind his eyes. He slipped into darkness again –

He was soaked, he was desperate, he wanted to breathe and piss – _piss himself_ , if he had to, but this panicked, thrilling erection of being _so close_ to death, edging up to it – but alongside the fear and the humiliation, the _trust_ –

He thought Voldemort’s hand tightened over his face at that – he thought he was crying, his face slick with sweat or tears or both – his limbs, exhausted before, ached from useless kicking. “I’ll do it,” he tried to say against Voldemort’s tight fingers. “Just… let…. “

And then his limp form was being lifted, being shoved to the lower half of the bed, and Voldemort’s legs were wrapped around him. He leaned in, using the hand still on Harry’s face to push his chin up for brief eye contact (Harry felt his eyelids flutter, his chest still spasming). “You can’t come until I have,” he said, lifting his hand just enough to let Harry hear the whole sentence. With magic, his pants were gone, and Harry’s face was pushed against his erection. _My god_. He was pinned, desperate, but to suck Voldemort off instead of suffocation –

Of course Voldemort felt this sentiment, and made some amused sound. The hand on the back of Harry’s head forced him down, forced his mouth onto his already-stiff cock. Stiff from _watching him, being him_. His other hand, mockingly, slipped halfway up Harry’s face to hold his nose shut.

“You’ll manage.”

Harry’s mouth fell open gasping for a breath, and then Voldemort thrust, pushing his cock between Harry’s lips until he gagged. _Air, he needed air_ , and his warm wet mouth gasped around Voldemort’s insistent cock every time he meant to draw a breath. His vision swam, and he _kept – losing – focus_ , his lips hanging around Voldemort’s cock as his vision grayed. At those moments, Voldemort’s hand pressed down upon the back of his head firmly, and he bobbed his mouth around his member again. He propped his elbows on either of Voldemort’s thighs, some gesture at pinning him to keep from being choked by that insistent thrusting. He breathed raggedly around it, his choking gasps muffled by the thick cock being pushed down his throat.  He must have grayed out for a few seconds at a time, still struggling for air, still being smothered.

And when Voldemort was impatient, was just done with him, he heaved Harry off him, to crawl up the bed, his hips splayed before his face. And he pinned Harry – pinned Harry with his goddamn _cock_ – making him choke and splutter and gasp stupid words, asking him to let him up. Voldemort would never let him up.

His hands were useless, it was claustrophobic to be pinned in such a humiliating position, and at the same time he wanted all of it, desperately. His motion now brushed his erection against the wet, swollen front of his nappy, so delicious and wrong that he was frozen for a moment, so close to getting off already. He groaned as the tip of Voldemort’s cock hit the back of his throat, blocking his windpipe, sending reverberations through Voldemort’s cock and up his spine, he felt it residually in their psychic contact. _Christ_. He could feel all of it then, feel his lips as though around his own cock, feel the gasps and the way his tongue plunged around its girth and the tiny, gorgeous shudders. Even the graying of his vision, the heaving of his chest – they made Voldemort so happy, made them both so happy.

The Legilimency opened further between them, intertwining their lusts and their needs, and Harry could look down at _himself_ , flushed and gasping and helpless, and he _loved it_. Fuck. His eyes squeezed shut to hold onto that image, he swallowed insistently, over and over, swallowing for air and for cock and for the satisfaction of it. To watch his own adam’s apple bob in his beautiful fragile throat. And as he thought this, some thrill ran through Voldemort, who reached down, pressing two long fingers into the hollow above his collarbone. “ _I could kill you_ ,” he said out loud, or in Harry’s head, or maybe Harry only hallucinated it in his suffocation – but it was enough. The thrill that surged him brought him to orgasm, brought them _both_ to orgasm, and then Harry was choking and gasping around a mouthful of hot come. He could only swallow, again and again.

“Good boy,” Voldemort might have muttered, or maybe it was in his head again. What did it matter, really.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Voldemort had gone by the time Harry got out of bed for real. He didn’t care to transfigure the room back to its more depressing state, so he didn’t. Instead he could spare just enough magic to put himself back together, with cleaning spells, and spells to mask abrasions, and spells to put his hair back in some sort of order.

All of this was to no effect, because as he entered the dining hall, he was immediately shoved back out by a bright red Fury. Ginny. _Ginny_. Fuck. “Hi. Um. How are you?”

 She quirked her eyebrows in a particular wry way she did. “No, how are _you_?” Dragging him down the hall and out of earshot, she shoved him into an alcove, her hands braced on his chest. “Just tell me you’re shagging him, already.”

“We are, yeah.” The words tumbled out of his mouth without thought or consent… the same way that Veritaserum worked, but in a spell? Holy shit. “What is that?” he asked. “It’s brilliant, I’ve never seen – “

“Don’t change the subject. For how long?”

“Uh….” Apparently not even the Veritaserum (or its spell equivalent) could decide when he should start counting. The first time Voldemort had been inside him? The first handjob? First time he’d indulged Harry’s awful fetishes? “I don’t know – I’m sorry,” he said, the look on Ginny’s face finally registering with him. “I’m so sorry, Gin. I should’ve told you…. It was sex magic he was using. I mean, I didn’t know it was, at first. Not until the magic had already, um, forged some bonds….”

Her grip had loosened at the words _sex magic_ , the lines in her face softening. “Oh god, Harry….” Straightening up and apparently recognizing they were both going to fall apart in this conversation, she took a half-step back. “We need somewhere to talk. Do you know a place?”

“Yeah.” He nodded in the direction of solitary. He wouldn’t take her to the room in which he and Voldemort had been, that’d be perverse, but. “Solitary confinement,” he explained as she followed his gaze. “I haven’t got keys for it, but we could try Alohomora. Unless you’d rather rough up a guard to get in officially?”

This got a smile. “You know, I _would_. But we’ll try a spell first.”

Ginny got the door open with wandless magic before Harry even tried. “You’ve gotten good,” Harry said in faint surprise as she ushered him in.

“What choice do we have?” she shrugged. Most of the rooms down the corridor were dark, but spotting a lit one, she motioned Harry over and peered into the narrow window. Then she choked. “Malfoy’s in there.”

“ _What_?” Harry slid beside her, to see Draco stretched on a bunk inside, his face toward the wall. At that angle, they could tell neither whether Draco was awake, nor even breathing. “Okay,” Harry said in a sigh, pulling them both away before they could be spotted. “He’ll still be in there when we’re done. Right?”

Ginny side-eyed him. “You need him for something?” she asked skeptically.

“He’ll tell us where the Death Eaters are. That Veritaserum spell you’ve got – “ he nodded to her in rather impressed acknowledgement “ – holy shit. We’ll need that.”

“Tonks and I were working it out,” Ginny said. “There was no time to brew the potion, nor enough substitutions in that kitchen. Incidentally,” she said with a crooked smile, “for all the time we spent testing the spell on each other, I know a _lot_ about Tonks now. Like, a lot.”

“Would you use it on Malfoy, then? And then some of the guards. If you haven’t already, I mean.”

“Ah, Tonks is going to do the guards. She thought her Auror license would protect her, and it goes well with Moody’s eye anyway,” she shrugged. “But yes, I can corner Malfoy afterward. Unless you’d rather now?”

He shook his head. God, Ginny was _so_ great, so good at what she does, and somehow still so level with him in spite of everything. “You’re right, we need to talk.” He pressed his palm to the door of Malfoy’s cell, spinning a few webbed wards across it. “He won’t go anywhere,” he added. Ginny looked mildly impressed.

Letting themselves into an empty cell, Harry transfigured the cot into a deep sofa, and Ginny (hilariously) conjured them each a shot of fire whiskey. “Cheers.”

Settling into the couch, with their legs crossed and knees touching, felt _normal_. More normal than was warranted, more than Harry deserved. God, if Ginny let him stay in her life in any capacity after this, he’d never ever ever take her for granted. The touch and the fire whiskey warmed him from the inside, and it was all better than he warranted at the moment.

“So.” Ginny cocked her head. “Sex magic.”

“Yeah.” After a stupid pause, he asked, “Does your spell have a name yet?”

Ginny frowned at him. “Why would – ?”

“You should use it now,” he interrupted, before he could lose his nerve to suggest this. “I’ll learn it faster if I can feel it. And you deserve….” (And secretly he wondered which would win out, the truth-telling spell or the sworn silence about Horcruxes. He might literally be rent in two if she asked the right question, Christ.)

Ginny put her hands on either of Harry’s knees, and tiny pulses of the spell moved across the touch. “We haven’t named it yet. We, ah, still need to look into the legality. And it uses a lot of magic, it’s really not practical yet.”

“I can give you more.” It was the one thing he had gotten really good at, with Voldemort. Ginny nodded him onward, and he took a breath. “So, sex magic. It was blood magic at first. He had this book of runes, he’d write them all down my skin and then collect my blood every day. Last fall, that is, when he first took me from Hogwarts. He had a potion, something to do with immortality – “

“Of course,” Ginny snorted.

“ _Of course_ ,” Harry agreed. “And that took a week. He said if I cooperated, all he wanted was my blood, and he wouldn’t have to kill me, and wouldn’t have to kill _you_ , and I thought I was keeping everyone safe…. I mean, besides being an accomplice to another one of his immortality things, but.” He swallowed, but the Veritaserum wouldn’t let him flag. “Sometimes though, he’d, uh, get me off. I didn’t ask why, I just thought… Merlin, I don’t know, that he thought he’d trade cooperation for handjobs?”

At this, Ginny dropped her face in her hands, making a noise somewhere between laughter and gagging. “I’m sorry,” she muttered through her fingers. “This is absurd. Sorry. Voldemort was giving you handjobs. Go on.” She kept one fist at her face, pressed against her mouth to stifle herself. God, he didn’t deserve her.

“He told me when I asked outright. When it was all… I don’t know, when my feelings were out of hand. I don’t even like men,” he added desperately, as though that’d explain anything.

At that, Ginny’s eyebrows shot _all_ the way up. “You don’t?” At Harry’s look, she again waved him on. “Nevermind. Later.” She pushed a particularly strong pulse of Veritaserum into his skin to prompt him onward.

Bugger. Too much, far too much truth was going to spill out of his lips right now. “And he, uh, indulged me a lot. Things I… I’d never known I liked.” A prompting look from Ginny wrenched the words from him. “Nappies, mostly, and pissing. And being tied up, and spanked, and humiliated.  He smothered me last night, it was brilliant. And there’s this thing with Legilimency that he does, that we can feel how the other is feeling, and I could look down at myself, and….” Horrified, he bit down hard on the inside of his lips, but apparently he’d divulged enough, and the spell pushed him no further. _God_.

Ginny gave herself a moment before replying: “Well, I would’ve done some of those things for you.”

“But you don’t scare me,” Harry objected. It sounded stupid even as he was saying it.

“Oh, Merlin,” Ginny sighed. They were both slouched forward enough that she leaned in, resting her forehead against Harry’s, and thought. “I’m really not worried whether he’s a good shag. Although – “ She made a face, her freckles cascading as she scrunched up her nose. “I’m worried – we’re worried – that you _keep running back to him_. And the danger that puts everyone in. Snape didn’t mention the sex magic, though, that changes things…. Well, at least some things.”

“ _Snape_?” Harry rocked back in horror.

“Oh. Ah. Yeah, he rather… outed you this morning. To the Order. He didn’t mean to, he was just frustrated that” (she put on a nasal tone) “’You trust me less than you trust Potter, and _he’s_ been shagging the Dark Lord.’”

“Oh my god,” Harry said, laughter breaking through his groan because what else could he do. “Poor Snape,” he said, half-sincere. (Ginny rolled her eyes at this.) “He’s, well, done more for me than he needed to. And Remus… Remus has been mediating for us both, and it’s really not fair to him.”

Again Ginny rolled her eyes. “Mum thinks you’ve all got the same savior complex, you know.”

“She’s probably right.”

“And that you all need to be locked up in the same Mind Healing ward,” she continued, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Also right.”

But she went alarmingly quiet and serious again. “People go to prison for sex magic, did you know?” she asked. “It’s not something that’s talked about really, but there’s always either coercion _before_ or coercion _after_ , so…. They’d understand, if you told them.”

She hadn’t asked him anything, hadn’t prompted anything from him, and yet the Veritaserum was tugging him forward, toward a revelation he couldn’t even fully explain. “It’s not all the sex magic, though,” he said. “I mean, I wanted it. A lot.” It was an awful statement to say out loud, but the spell wouldn’t let him omit it. Bugger. He forged on as though to cover it: “And we’re connected in other ways too. It’s magnetic, when we’re nearby, there’s no other word for it. And we can share magic easier. He’s, uh, bad at magic voids, like here and like at Hogwarts, right? But I can revive him with my own magic. He thinks – “

And then his throat closed up abruptly, keeping the vow Voldemort had placed on him. And still the truth telling spell compelled him forward. He struggled to somehow impossibly satisfy them both. “I can’t tell you,” he finally gasped. Which _was_ true, and _was_ allowed by the vow, and then he was no longer struggling to breathe. Goddamn.

Ginny pulled her hands back, apparently guessing the complication. “We’d wondered,” she said. “If you were keeping him alive. Is it just because…?”

He couldn’t say how she intended for that sentence to end. _Because he’s useful? Because it’d be wrong not to? Because you love him?_ Nor could he say how he would even answer any of them.

Without the truth telling spell on him, he was free to tell her slightly untrue things, things that wouldn’t literally suffocate him. “He’s cursed me,” he said. “That… if he dies, I die. We can’t kill him yet. So I’ve got to work with him instead.” (His lungs ached as he spoke but didn’t actually kill him, so apparently he’d gotten away with that much.)

Unexpectedly, Ginny nodded. “Snape said something similar this morning. Nobody believed him, but – “ another wry smile “ – the truth telling spell has already been _really_ useful. He was furious, of course. But he said it was a conjecture of Dumbledore’s,” ( _oh, fuck_ ) “that he told Snape to pass on when the time was right.”

He pushed his feelings back down deep inside himself, all of them – the ones about Dumbledore, the ones about _Snape_ of all people being the bloody keeper of his secrets. The ones about having to trust Snape to act in his best interests. _Fuck_.

Seeing the look on his face (as he apparently had not successfully concealed all those goddamn feelings), Ginny conjured them another round of shots. “Sounds like a hell of a morning,” was the only thing he could think to say.

“They don’t know what to do with you now,” Ginny said in a sigh. “But they thought that I should get to you first,” she said. “To, I don’t know, castigate you for the sex?”

“That would’ve been fair.”

A flash of shock crossed her face. “How can you say that,” she scolded. “You’ve been manipulated in _so_ many ways here, Merlin’s tits. But….” She sounded nearly apologetic. “It seems the best thing is to send you back in. We’d have to explain it to the Order. I can, if you would rather not,” she offered, wonderfully. “But would you be bait for him?”

Her pity scrambled his already-complex feeling. He didn’t _feel_ like a victim, or abused, or taken advantage of anymore. And Ginny should hardly be apologizing for sending him back to the person that he’d gone behind all their backs to see for months anyway. But… “Of course. Whatever you need. You’ve got a plan, then?”

She shook her head. “No. But you will. You know what you can get from him, better than we do, after all.”

“Right.” Whatever he could do, to make this up to them.

They took their time in leaving. It was a lot to handle, in one morning. But he had to get to Malfoy, before someone else did.

But when they again peered into the glass of Malfoy’s cell, they saw nothing. The wards remained undisturbed, stretched across the door. Harry and Ginny looked at each other, concerned. “Did he Apparate?” Harry asked in an undertone. “Or maybe he’s got an invisibility spell?”

But no, it was far simpler. As Harry eased open the cell door (you know, just in case), a fist connected with his face, making him stumble backwards a few paces. Ginny was pushing past him before he knew what was happening.

Draco had been poised against the wall, waiting for them – and Harry saw why when he was inside the cell. His wards had bled through the door, their glow growing stronger as he neared them and fainter as he moved away. It was a nearly perfect tracking device. By the time he’d gotten all the blood off his face and his robes, Ginny had Malfoy pinned against a wall, conjuring vines that broke through the concrete floor to entangle him. His face was more drawn and pale than usual. “Where have you been?” she demanded.

Malfoy looked between them, first bewildered and then angry. “Why would you _care_?” he snapped. “It suits you, to be tag teaming vigilante justice fighters now, but surely you could find better targets.” He kicked at the vines around his legs, and they tightened themselves.

“If you agitate them, they grow thorns,” Ginny warned. Malfoy stopped.

Ginny stepped in, keeping her hand on Malfoy’s shoulder. “ _Answer me_ ,” she hissed. “We’ve all noticed that the Death Eaters are missing. Have you been with them? Have _they_ done this?”

Malfoy’s eyes went wide, recognizing the truth-telling spell. “Yes.” The word was forced from his lips. Then a vicious look: “Though Potter could’ve told you that, as he’s quite _valuable_ to the Dark Lord these days.”

Harry shoved his reaction to that deep down, instead opting for (he hoped) a cool look. “I am,” he agreed. “But if you cooperate with us, he’d never have to know you’re here.”

Malfoy slackened, defeated. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” he muttered. “It was supposed to be a _repatriation_. Of the Mudbloods to the Muggles, of course,” he explained, at their looks. “They double-crossed us, though. We should’ve never trusted them, they’re only proving all the things people say about them. _Ow_ , bugger off,” he protested as Ginny charmed thorns to spring from the vines.

“You can keep your editorializing to yourself,” she said. “Where are the Death Eaters now?”

“You can’t fight them,” Draco said. “You’re going to need them, for whatever _heroism_ you’ve planned.” Ginny shoved him, apparently pushing a stronger surge of the spell between them, because he continued, aggravated, “I don’t _know_. I stowed away on one of the Muggle vehicles, to come here. I couldn’t explain the way back. It’s another building in the middle of nowhere. Some military installation. They kept us in _barracks_ ,” he sulked. “And we have to _request_ to do magic, and they’ve put the awful magic-blocking spell over the buildings there too so we can’t do anything effective anyway, and then they aim their awful….” He made a shooting motion – poorly, with his arms still impeded.

“Guns,” Harry provided the word. “They’re carrying guns, and they’re all over here too.”

“They’re _uncivilized_ ,” Draco pronounced. “But they tell us they’ve got shooting orders, if we do any _unauthorized magic_.” He swallowed. “Or if we don’t do the magic that they request of us. They’ve learned quite a lot, what we’re able to do. It’s humiliating.”

Harry was about to ask a snappy rhetorical question of what did Draco _expect_ , but Ginny was frowning thoughtfully. “You’re here alone?”

“Yes.”

“Did anyone know you were going?”

“No.” He went ahead to answer the obvious question. “I thought there might be solutions here. Wizards putting together some sort of resistance. One of the soldiers recognized me, though.” He nodded to the cell around them. “And he didn’t know why I was here, he only knew I shouldn’t have been.”

“Right.” Ginny had stepped back, now sizing Malfoy up. “Do you know anything worth knowing?” she asked. “The plans, the dates, the people involved…. Or should we leave you here?” she added.

Malfoy lifted his chin. “I’m not betraying the Death Eaters,” he said. “The cost of that is worse than anything you people could think of, much less inflict on anyone.”

Ginny’s frown deepened, but Harry cut in here: “Voldemort hates this,” he said (taking some pleasure in the way Draco flinched at Voldemort’s name). “And he’s been trying to undo it all. So if you’d rather end up on _his_ side at the end of all this….”

Draco studied him for a long moment. “Potter, what _are_ you doing,” he asked softly.

It was an excellent question, from an unlikely source. “These days, I’m a diplomat,” Harry said. It was nearly true. “And I really think you’d want to be on our side.”

Draco considered, began saying something, and stopped himself abruptly. Harry snapped, “We haven’t got _time_ for this. Come with us or you’ll stay here alone.”

Draco didn’t trust him. He shouldn’t, really; nobody should. But… they really didn’t have the time. A well-placed blast of magic directly beneath Draco’s chin made him flinch, biting back a yelp, and the heat withered the vines. Harry turned to go. “Are you coming?”

“Yes.” Again, his words were sulky and tiny, as non-committal as he could pull off. Harry gathered the magic from the wards strung across the door on his way out.

“We’ll need some connection with the barracks,” Ginny was planning aloud as they left. “If smuggling people over is too difficult. Could we set up a Floo network? Or charm the birds to deliver letters? Though what we need right now is a _negotiation_ , really….” She turned to Draco, trailing behind them as though he’d rather be anywhere else. “What are the Death Eaters going to do? What _have_ they done?”

A bit of a dark smile curled his lips. “They’ll kill everyone,” he said. “What do you expect.”

Ginny stopped, turning to square off with Malfoy (he couldn’t quite keep the surprise off his face). “ _Really_ ,” she said. “You understand, we can’t do anything for them if that’s what it’ll come to. Why should we wrap our fates up with theirs? Why not just work on the escape _here_ , and the Death Eaters can rot in the barracks.”

Unexpectedly, Draco raised his chin in a small gesture of acknowledgement. “Maybe you should,” he said. “I’ve never understood Potter’s _savior_ streak, anyway.”

Harry looked back. “Nor will you ever, Malfoy.”

But then there was no more time for banter, because as they neared the door, the knob twisted from the other side, as somebody let themselves in. _Shit._

The door opened just wide enough for a gun’s barrel to be poked inside, and the sliver of a soldier’s face peering in behind it. He made eye contact with Harry for a split second and it was enough – then an impossibly loud noise and a flash. Harry whipped a shield in front of them without knowing he was doing so.

A split second later, with a grunt and a spray of blood across the doorway, the soldier slumped. The bullet must have ricocheted off the shield to catch him in the throat, and as his mouth fell open, blood poured out onto his uniform. _Fuck_. Swirling the magic around them like a cape, he improvised an invisibility spell. They had to side-step the shuddering body to get out.

Solitary was in a slow part of the hospital, but the noise had attracted attention, of course. Guards were flooding the corridor faster than they could exit, from all angles. God, had there always been so many guards here? He crushed himself against the wall, hoping that Ginny and Draco behind him were doing the same, but they were stuck, a wall of soldiers before them with no way to push through undetected. Harry glanced back, attempting to look more in control than he felt. “Hold on,” he said, hoping they could hear him over the ringing in their ears, “we’re Apparating.”

He tightened the invisibility charm around them like a lasso, focusing on _precisely_ what Apparating felt like every time Voldemort had taken him along. He’d seen the mechanisms, seen those tubes that would deposit them anywhere else…. Wrenching his hands upwards as though to gather them all up in his magic, he Apparated them… somewhere.

But he felt them slipping, felt the magic in his grasp get lighter, slipping through his fingers. He looked back, panicked, but was enveloped in darkness, dark enough to make his eyes throb. He felt himself drawn toward something, some great force…. This wasn’t what Apparation had ever felt like….

 _Slam_. He had fallen fully facedown onto a stone floor, and took a long moment to begin breathing again. But… this floor looked beautifully familiar. He rolled onto his back (prodding at his ribs tenderly because he couldn’t say for certain that none of them were broken) until he was gazing up at the enchanted ceiling of Hogwarts’s Great Hall. _Oh thank god._

He didn’t move at first. Then, as the adrenaline and panic and realization all caught up with him, he found himself choking back sobs, his chest heaving, fully out of his control. Ginny and Draco… he had tried to hold onto them. He should’ve tried harder. They could’ve been splinched, or lost between dimensions, or dropped back into that fray of soldiers. _The soldier._ The image of blood bubbling between his lips was emblazoned on the back of his eyelids now. Pressing his hands to his face, hard, only made it worst. “Fuck,” he said aloud, his small voice swallowed by the massive room.

But Hogwarts was a reprieve, Hogwarts was a safehouse. He couldn’t quite tell if the cloaking charm was still active over it, but it was quiet, and had seemingly been left alone since winter’s battle. This would be their fortress, then. If he could get the wizards here in any number, here they would be safe. He got to his feet, to survey the castle’s stability.

Everyone had cleared out months ago – apparently even after the battle, it was safer for students to stay away than return. The stillness of the castle was a force and presence unto itself, buzzing in Harry’s ears as he strode through the hallways. The house elves were gone. The ghosts were gone (were ghosts _allowed_ to leave?). Most of the portraits were empty; some were missing entirely. Hogwarts had never felt so, well, _dead._

He made his way toward Gryffindor Tower. Maybe there’d be something useful there. He had at least desperately missed his invisibility cloak for the past few months (even if it was becoming a bit unnecessary, with his newfound magic skills). But passing through a seventh floor corridor, he heard a scuffle and then a crash behind one of the walls. After a moment of orienting himself (as the Fat Lady’s portrait had been taken or saved or put in storage sometime last fall), he realized that the noise had come from the Room of Requirement.

Well. Better to take by surprise than to be taken. He paced before the wall: “Show me who’s inside.” The door swung open.

He peered in: the room was in its permutation as a place for storage, with boxes and furniture and artifacts piled high. He listened for more noises; and upon hearing nothing, tiptoed into one of the impromptu aisles piled high on either side. The crash had come from farther down, as a precarious stack of boxes had tipped over, blocking the way entirely and scattering very old books everywhere. He approached, stacking the boxes back up as he went.

And then, movement from the other side of the little avalanche. A bulky box on the far side of the mess was lifted away, and there was Voldemort, looking at him expectantly. “Finally.”

“ _Finally_?” He re-stacked enough of the boxes to get through, into something that passed for a clearing in this room, a few plush armchairs and sofas gathered around an area rug. “I’m not supposed to be here, I didn’t….” He stopped, backed up, and realized he couldn’t explain how this bloody day had already gone.

Voldemort seemed to understand his stumbling and silence anyway. “I felt your presence. It’s really rather acute, these days. Did you Apparate in? Or did you break down the wards outside?” A look of exasperation. “If it’s the latter, it’s really preferable to leave them up for the moment. Though I only attempted to Apparate in on a whim, but something about the protection spells have changed, presumably this shell changes their composition….”

He tried again. “No, I Apparated. I didn’t know I was going to end up here. I mean, in the Great Hall, at least. But I thought Hogwarts would make a good fortress, so I wanted to look around before I went back.” He drifted toward the furniture, wanting to be seated before he said anything more emotionally charged.

Voldemort followed, unusually amenable. Softly, he said, “Harry. _What happened_?”

So he was clearly not alright, and he let Voldemort pull them both onto a sofa before he became hysterical. And he explained everything: that Snape had informed the Order that Harry’d been with Voldemort all this time. The sex. Dumbledore’s guess that he was a Horcrux. Malfoy, and the Death Eaters at the barracks. Then the soldier, and the bullet, and the shield, and so much blood. He slumped, burying his head in his hands as the memory of warm, spattered blood accosted him. “ _Oh my god_ ,” he groaned.

Voldemort hummed in a way that might’ve been an attempt at sympathy. “And then?”

What more did he expect of Voldemort, really. “And then I tried Apparating us away from the body. All three of us. But I couldn’t hold onto them, I don’t know where they ended up… and I was pulled here.” He took a deep breath, willing his feelings to remain suppressed. “And I don’t know what to do next.”

A long silence. As Voldemort thought, he twisted a golden ring around his middle finger, one Harry hadn’t seen before. “Well, the Horcruxes have a bit of a magnetic pull toward one another. The diadem’s activity would have drawn you here. It will be an inconvenience you’ll have to bear.”

That was more of a distraction than an answer, but he took it. “Is this the Horcrux?” He reached to touch the ring.

Voldemort obliged, slipping it off to drop into Harry’s palm. “Yes. Ravenclaw's diadem. Look,” and he tilted it upward to show off the tiny jewel setting. “Shrunken, of course, because it’d be rather unwieldy to have around otherwise.”

And despite everything, the thought of Voldemort going around in a diadem gave him a fleeting but intense bit of happiness. “Does it help? With magic, I mean.”

“It will. Does the military base also have the magical drought on it?”

“I think so, yeah.” He slipped the miniature diadem onto his finger, frowning at the… something he felt. Something strong but not bad. “The Death Eaters are being forced to do magic at gunpoint, though.”

“That’s very unpleasant.” Voldemort considered. “Hogwarts might be the best option for a fortress. At least in its current condition. We’d have to set up new Apparation points inside the castle,” he was musing mostly to himself. “Clean out some spare rooms, rent some elves…. _Oh._ ” And then he was looking down at Harry’s hand, where a dark discoloration was spreading rapidly outward from the diadem.

“ _Christ_.” Yanking the diadem off, he shoved it back into Voldemort’s hands. The discoloration remained, like a queer bruise. He hadn’t felt a thing. “What _is_ this?” he asked, futilely scrubbing at the mark with his thumb.

“It’s the bit of you that’s been turned evil, of course.” Harry glanced up: mocking him, of course. With a measure more sincerity, Voldemort shrugged minutely. “It would make an interesting experiment. Horcruxes are incredibly under-studied, for obvious reasons.”

“Right.” He dropped his hands into his lap deliberately, as prodding at it wouldn’t make it any better. “So, Hogwarts?”

“Yes.” Voldemort ticked the items off on his fingers: “Find space within the castle. Hire back the help. Set up Apparation points. Figure out a supply chain – internationally, of course, with nothing working domestically. Find mass transit to bring the wizards here. Publicize the move. Redistribute their wands. And decide what to do with the Muggles.” He looked down at his outstretched fingers. “Is that all?”

 _Is that all_ , god. Still, Harry nodded. “Moving everyone will be the hardest bit. The Order’s been discussing it. They – we – they don’t know.”

“If they could orchestrate themselves well enough to hide Hogwarts, they’ve certainly got enough magic to arrange transit.”

“But _what_ , though? Is there, like, a mass Apparation spell? Or a mass Portkey?”

Voldemort hummed thoughtfully. “There is not. But there could be.” He nodded to Harry, as though he hadn’t been being facetious. “Synchronized Portkeys. Before the Muggles realize what’s happening. The library will have enough theory of magic to cobble something together, certainly.”

“Right.” His insides were easing incrementally, settling him after a thoroughly unsettling day. As always happened when he was with Voldemort now. “We also don’t know how to get to the barracks. To, y’know, rescue the Death Eaters.”

Voldemort seemed both mildly surprised and amused by this suggestion. “You are inscrutable,” he said. (Harry disagreed privately; he was perfectly scrutable, just not great at making decisions in his own best interests. Obviously.) Voldemort’s look darkened. “Though, whichever of the Death Eaters believes they’re in control right now….”

“Don’t,” Harry groaned. “Draco didn’t say who was in charge, Snape _wouldn’t_ say. Let’s just save the world first.” He leaned back against the couch. “And would you sign a treaty?” It’d been something he’d been thinking about for awhile. “Even something temporary, until all this is finished. We can’t continue to split ourselves up like this, our world is too small.”

Voldemort for some reason did not reject this out of hand as Harry had expected. “Why, are you tired of mediating?”

“No,” Harry insisted.

He raised his eyebrows. “You should be.” A moment of consideration. “And it would depend entirely on what the treaty might require. Not that it could even be properly ratified anyway, without a functional ministry, but….”

So it wasn’t a refusal, and that was beautiful and unexpected. “Well, if we had a ministry, we wouldn’t need a treaty. Would you draft one, then?” He looked around the room for paper. “Uh, accio parchment?” A blank scroll came whizzing through the air; catching it with his seeker reflexes, he held it out to Voldemort.

“ _Now_?”

Harry frowned at him. “I don’t think we can do this without you,” he said. “And I wouldn’t want to, anyway.”

“ _Harry_ ,” Voldemort sighed. “I had intended to stay overnight at Hogwarts already, at least for one night. For recovery. I can expend as much time as it takes for you to go to the library and pull any charms and theory of magic books that deal in spells of mass effect.”

“Right. I will.” Harry pressed the scroll into Voldemort’s hands. Getting up from the couch, though, he stopped short. “I also want to visit Dumbledore’s portrait before we go. Uh, do you want to join me for it?”

Surprise and then consideration from Voldemort. “Yes. Thank you.”

Harry nodded, then picked his way back out of the Room of Requirement, leaving Voldemort looking thoughtfully at the blank scroll before him.

 

Happily, the seeking spells on the library were still functional, such that Harry could ask a gargoyle crouched by the front desk for anything on spells of mass effect, and a flurry of books from the stacks launched themselves at his head. Brilliant. Conjuring a few totes, he brought them all along. Voldemort would make a scholar of him yet, he thought wryly as he hoisted the bags over his shoulder.

But on his way back, he passed by the gargoyle that guarded the Headmaster’s office, and his insides twisted. Dumbledore deserved, you know, a bit of a heads up before he came by with Voldemort. As the gargoyle itself was inactive ( _dead_?), he simply let himself in.

Most of the portraits were empty or missing. In a far corner, a group of medieval-looking witches and wizards had all gathered in one frame, playing what looked like spades. Harry approached: “Excuse me.” Nothing. “ _Excuse me_ ,” he said, a bit louder. The wizard in the foreground, with a long-suffering sigh, set down his hand.

“The students can’t be back yet, can they?” he asked. “We weren’t told that Hogwarts was opening again.”

“No, it’s not. We’re not. I’m here to try to fix things.”

A skeptical look from a witch over the wizard’s shoulder. “ _You’re_ the hero?”

Unbelievably, yes. And wait until they saw Voldemort. He nodded briefly, not particularly needing to defend himself against these portraits (nor _could_ he, honestly). “I’m looking for Dumbledore. Is he around?”

“Eh, sure. _Dumbledore_!” the wizard hollered over his shoulder.

And then Dumbledore entered the adjacent frame, his features lighting up as he saw Harry. “Harry. I assume this is a meeting of some urgency. Here.” He nodded toward a row of frames opposite the card game, to give them all a little more space to talk. Harry followed, pulling an armchair before the isolated frame in the corner that Dumbledore had settled into.

“It is. Sorry for disturbing you.”

Dumbledore frowned. “I would give a great deal to be disturbed more often. Will Hogwarts re-open soon?”

“We’re looking at using it as a fortress. Uh, Voldemort and I. We’ve got a sort of… truce.” Dumbledore’s face remained impressively impassive at this news. “I’ll bring him by later tonight. If that’s okay, of course.”

“Of course.” No break in passivity, nothing Harry could read emotionally.

“But… everything’s rather shit right now. Sorry,” he added. “The Muggles have all of Britain kept in camps right now. They’d like to enslave us, they just don’t know how to begin. They’ve taken our wands, and they’re keeping these magical droughts over the buildings. The Order’s been working on things, I don’t know how successfully. They don’t tell me much, since I’ve been with Voldemort,” he conceded, forcing the statement to sound neutral. “But I’ve been teaching everyone wandless magic, so that soon we’ll be powerful enough to fight back.”

That did pique Dumbledore’s curiosity. “Is wandless magic a talent of yours?”

“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t know it was until I had to learn it. But everyone’s gotten good at it. Now Voldemort’s sent me out to get books on creating mass Portkeys – “ he indicated the tote bags behind him “ – and he’ll be setting up Apparation points within the castle. Unless there’s somewhere safer?” he asked, hope alighting upon him that Dumbledore could solve all this.

Instead, he steepled his fingers before him, deep in thought. “Hogwarts was among the safest locations in wizarding Britain when I was alive,” he said. “Of course, as I haven’t truly seen what has transpired since….” He made a mildly hopeless gesture. “Was the Order successful in putting a cloaking charm over the castle?”

God, nobody had told Dumbledore anything in _months_. He felt a pang of guilt. “They did, yeah. It’s still invisible from the outside. It’s probably the only reason it’s not destroyed entirely.”

“Ah, this castle has suffered worse than that skirmish.” His fingers steepled more acutely, and he peered over them. “What do you understand Voldemort’s motivation to be?” he asked.

Harry hesitated. It had just _suited_ him to believe he and Voldemort were working toward a common cause, of course. Voldemort had never said otherwise. “He hates this,” he said. “He doesn’t want to live in secrecy anymore. We stayed with a group of Bedouins, whose Muggle government knows about them and leaves them alone. We could do that too, couldn’t we? I mean, we’d probably have to do it with intimidation, but….”

Dumbledore looked harder at him. “Is that truly what you want?”

“I don’t know enough to know what I want,” Harry snapped – he truly didn’t mean to, but he did. He winced immediately. “Sorry.” Dumbledore waved him off. “I mean, really, I don’t. I’ve just been trying to make decisions that Voldemort and the Order agree on. I only want the fighting to stop.” It had been the one thing he could consistently ask.

A long silence, as Dumbledore looked as though he were swallowing back everything he wanted to say. “And you came now to make me aware you’d be with Voldemort later?” he finally asked. It wasn’t an answer to anything.

“Yeah.”

Dumbledore nodded, in a finalizing sort of way. “Thank you,” he said. “Allow me some time to think. Paintings think more slowly than fleshly creatures,” he explained wryly. “Do bring Voldemort. I’ll be waiting.”

“Right.” Harry rose, dissatisfied with the lack of answers Dumbledore had for him, but really, what did he expect. “Thanks, sir.” He gathered his books, leaving quickly, before Dumbledore could express any further disappointment in him.

Upon his return to the Room of Requirement, Voldemort had propped open the door, so that the glittering artifacts stored inside seemed to somehow illuminate the entire hallway. He was still upon the sofa, his spiky writing covering several feet of parchment before him. “Were the seeking charms inactive?” he asked without particularly looking up. “Or did you take some detour through the castle?”

“No, the library was fine. I got your books.” He slung the totes onto a plush chair.

“ _Your_ books,” Voldemort corrected. “Certainly you’ve experienced enough Portkeys to begin putting together a spell.”

Harry suppressed a sigh. “Right,” he said. “But I stopped by Dumbledore’s office. I thought I should, uh, warn him that we’d be coming in together.”

This got a flicker of amusement across Voldemort’s features. “That’s very thoughtful of you. Did it garner any reaction?”

“No. I don’t think so.” He took a seat beside Voldemort, looking at the parchment drying before them. “Should I be involved in this?” He nodded to the treaty. “I mean, I’m not anyone important, but….”

A look of surprise. “Don’t you understand?” Voldemort asked. “You are _everyone’s_ collateral.”

The realization made him choke. “Right. Yeah, okay.”

“I had assumed that was your intention.” A pause. “Though of course you wouldn’t have known your particular value to me, as a Horcrux. Regardless.”

He thought about it. “I mean, I guess that’s what I wanted. I didn’t know it was.”

Voldemort pointed the feathery end of the quill at him. “This is all contingent on whatever value your Order finds in you, of course. You need to continue being indispensable to them.”

“Yeah, well, they think they need me as an assassin, so….”

Something like a smile played on Voldemort’s lips. “What a queer little paradox you’ve created. You only must continue to be the Gordian knot that holds the wizarding world together.”

No pressure. Still, it was nearly reassuring, that Voldemort would mistake this stupid impossible position he’d gotten himself into for _strategy._ Sliding to the floor for more space to work, he pulled out the first handful of library books.

 

It was a quiet afternoon, as Voldemort split his time between finishing the treaty and reading (and explaining, at length) theory of magic books over Harry’s shoulder. Harry knew he should really return, his friends would be worried sick if he weren’t back soon, but… he couldn’t. The quiet, deliberate, thoughtful plotting with Voldemort was doing at least as much good, wasn’t it? Anyway, they were working on a spell to create Portkeys in batches, something small that could be distributed discreetly without the soldiers knowing it. “Paperclips?” Harry suggested late in the afternoon. “Marbles? Coins? We used coins last year to arrange a students’ resistance meeting,” he added. “It was Hermione’s idea and it was brilliant.”

“Hm,” Voldemort murmured in a tone of vague approval. “It should be Muggle currency, in order to be inconspicuous. Have you got a Muggle bank account?”

“Yeah.” It had made the summers with the Dursleys simpler, when he was still neglected but no longer particularly poor or dependent on them. “Should I ask for a sack of two pence, then?”

“You should.” Voldemort got to his feet. “But first we need to ensure that we’re even able to set up the destinations within Hogwarts.” Letting them both out, he tipped his head back to consider for a moment. “Probably no more than thirty people to a space, lest a stampede should break out. So, approximately a hundred destinations,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s start on the ground floor.”

So they did a walkthrough of Hogwarts, clearing out spaces and marking large circles for each destination. “Where’s your wand?” Voldemort asked him at one point, frowning at him as he wandlessly settled a glowing outline on the stones. “You didn’t get it taken away, did you?”

“Oh. No, I gave it to Moody. The Aurors could do more good with it than I could,” he shrugged. “I think I can do magic better without it, anyway.”

“You do,” Voldemort agreed. “It seems to be the way your life works, that you excel in everything you don’t expend any effort to do.”

Harry looked at him, surprised. Was Voldemort picking a _fight_? _Now_? “I guess,” he agreed neutrally, drawing another circle within a large alcove. “Is that why you want me to, y’know, read?”

The strangled sound out of Voldemort approximated horrified laughter. “In a sense. There should be room for four destinations along either side of the Great Hall,” he added as they entered the looming space. Harry drew the first before them. “It’s obvious that your exceptional power comes – at least in part – from our shared connections. That you would squander it on _Quidditch_ ” (he said it like a filthy word) “and mediocre schoolwork… it’s unfortunate.”

It took him a moment to parse this. “What, I’m not living up to your standards?” he said with a dry laugh. “Am I a _disappointment_ to you?”

Voldemort didn’t rise to that bait. “You didn’t ask for this,” he said in something like agreement. “But neither did I.”

God. Obviously the turmoil and the near-death experiences had gotten to Voldemort, had burrowed very deeply into his heart. At Voldemort’s gesture, he silently drew another circle on the stones.

 

Late in the evening, Voldemort had sent him to the hospital wing to bring back all of its Pepper-Up Potion, Verve, sleeplessness potion – anything of the sort. “Can’t I do anything?” he asked, as he came back with armfuls of bottles. Voldemort was now at the part where he was activating each of the shimmering circles as a Portkey destination, and it looked exhausting.

Voldemort took a Pepper-Up Potion from him, untwisting the cap and tossing back the entire bottle in a swallow. “I need your magic again,” he muttered. “ _Don’t_ say anything,” he added in warning, as Harry opened his mouth, “just do it.”

His stomach twisted with something like pity. “Sure.” Gathering magic in Hogwarts felt nothing like the attempts in the hospital: magic was so prevalent here, the closest analogue he could think of was like cupping handfuls of warm bathwater. He lay a hand at Voldemort’s elbow as he cast, silently pitying the tiny, constant shivers under his touch.

But when Voldemort stumbled with exhaustion at the top of a sixth-story staircase, Harry glared as he caught him. “Should we stop for a bit?” he asked, somewhat pointedly. “A few hours wouldn’t make a difference.”

Voldemort pushed him off, stalking down the staircase with his robes billowing behind him (Harry, _panicked_ , ran to spot him, because fuck it all if Voldemort died from a fall down the stairs tonight, honestly). “Of course it will.” His tone was clipped. “ _Obviously_ they’re going to panic at their first dead soldier. Whatever that catalyzes… we need to finish up here before they launch whatever their plans are. They’ll be anxious to dissolve this _captivity_ , before we kill anymore of them.”

Fuck. “Right,” he said, chastised, looping his arm in Voldemort’s once more to channel his magic.

Unexpectedly, Voldemort softened somewhat, reaching to run his long fingers through Harry’s hair. “I didn’t want to put too fine a point on it,” he said, as a sort of apology. “You’ve taken responsibility for more than enough. Here.” He opened a bottle of Pepper-Up Potion for Harry, and another for himself. “Cheers.” Harry drank deep.

It was nearly midnight by the time they reached the third floor, and the gargoyle that guarded the Headmaster’s office. “Should we do this now?” Harry asked, in what he hoped was a neutral manner. “Or would you rather finish with the Portkeys?”

Voldemort was impossibly tense, but he set his mouth in a determined line. “We’ll go now,” he said. “For a change of pace, if nothing else.”

Voldemort moved through the Headmaster’s office more confidently (if not casually) than Harry ever had, lighting all the candles in a blaze with a swish of his wand. “Dumbledore?” He turned in a full circle, inspecting the frames.

“He was over here….” Harry led him, hesitantly, to the chair he’d pulled in front of the gilt frame earlier.

Voldemort pushed him seated in the plush chair, himself taking his place behind it. His hands on Harry’s shoulders steadied them both. “You are here to listen,” he told Harry in an undertone, “and to maintain some sort of peace. Don’t make this conversation even more difficult.”

“I wouldn’t,” Harry objected. Still, he reached back to push some spare magic into Voldemort’s hands, clenched around his shoulders. The briefest look of appreciation.

To Dumbledore’s immense credit, when he entered the frame to find them both poised before it, his expression didn’t so much as flicker. “Tom,” he said. “Harry’s begun to bring me up to speed already.”

“They’ve got _camps_.” Voldemort was abrupt, and bitter. “They’ve already taken everyone’s blood, to maintain our slavery with blood vows. I won’t be treated as a threat in my own country, and certainly not by anyone who has only secured their power with _guns._ ” He said it as a filthy word.

Dumbledore allowed a long moment of silence before answering: “Nor should you. Nor should anyone. What do you propose?”

“The statute of secrecy is already obsolete,” Voldemort said. “It may as well formally be dissolved, so we can proceed with negotiations. Offering the Muggles some sort of aid would burden our population, but….” He lifted one hand in a resigned gesture.

A wry tug at Dumbledore’s mouth. “Many Ministers over the years have explained to me why the statute must remain in place.”

“Scrimgeour is dead,” Voldemort told him. A brief and unreadable look crossed Dumbledore’s face. “Urteil was assigned as Acting Minister, and she’s absent. The _Ministry_ is hardly a concern anymore, much less an effective force.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “I know you support the statute’s dissolution as well. Why resist it now?”

“I supported Grindelwald,” Dumbledore corrected. (Harry’s head snapped up; luckily, at the moment, both men were too focused to be distracted by this.) “ _He_ supported the dissolution. I have come to see… there would be a vast opportunity for an abuse of our powers, with the Muggles. Manipulation. Vengeance. Spite. Paternalism.”

“We are outnumbered by ten thousand-fold,” Voldemort objected.

Dumbledore inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Who is communicating with the Muggles?”

Voldemort curled his claws into Harry’s shoulders, briefly but painfully (and Harry inwardly sighed because they had been doing _so good_ up to that point). “The Death Eaters, apparently.” He sounded as though he were forcing the words between his teeth. “I was not involved in their negotiations.”

“Oh?”

Voldemort deeply resented admitting this; Harry felt the pangs of it deep inside him as if they were his own. “The Order had taken me prisoner for a time.”

“And yet you’re not in Azkaban.”

“Yes, pass on my gratitude, would you?” Voldemort’s tone was venomous. “I was collaborating with Harry. It would embarrass them, I assume, that they should have to indict him as well.”

Dumbledore glanced to Harry for a reaction; he stayed silent and hopefully neutral. Remus had told him the Order had needed Voldemort – and they did! – and that it’d be simpler to arrange for trial after everything else was resolved. If that weren’t true… well, it’d be just one more instance of everyone around him endangering themselves for his protection. Fuck.

He shook his head minutely, indicating that he didn’t need to say anything, and Dumbledore went on. “Perhaps,” he agreed. “You haven’t been in contact with the Death Eaters, then?”

“We’ve only just learned where they’re being held.” Voldemort bit his thin lips. “I’ll bring along anyone necessary for credibility. Not credibility with the Muggles – _obviously_ – but with the wizarding world. It shall be a non-partisan effort.” He pronounced it over-carefully, mocking the concept. “Assuming the Order and the Aurors don’t reject collaboration out of hand.”

Dumbledore nodded briefly. “Bring Harry with you,” he said. “Harry is a peacemaker.”

Harry looked up at the portrait, surprised. “I…. Yeah,” he muttered, bewildered that somehow both Dumbledore and Voldemort had, apropos of nothing, gotten this impression of him. “Of course.”

Voldemort made the tiniest gesture then, invisible to Dumbledore, as his thumb caressed the back of Harry’s neck with something like affection. “Yes,” he agreed blandly. “And then we’ll be sheltering the population at Hogwarts, until we’ve reached an agreement. Unless there are more secure accommodations…?”

“I already asked that,” Harry murmured, uselessly. He suppressed his surprise and sadness, that Voldemort would be holding out for Dumbledore to fix everything, the same as Harry had.

Dumbledore shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. Harry had mentioned Portkeys?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “That would seem to make the castle rather… porous.”

“Yes, _well_.”

But Dumbledore went on: “What sort of international support do you have? Madame Maxime has connections with La Liberté, Rektor Prazsky with the MSB…. Unfortunately more of my connections are academic than political,” he said apologetically. “All this is to say nothing of how other nations will feel about being outed on such a large scale, of course.”

Voldemort shrugged. “Those not interested in re-negotiating our relationship to the Muggles will continue to evade their detection, as they always have,” he said, a bit impatient. “The Hajaya have been involved. I know Ár Saoirse; Ireland likely would intervene on their behalf. And the Socratic Consortium, though presumably they’d be opposed to a globalized movement…. We only need supply lines, really,” he concluded, as though convincing himself this was a simple matter.

“Refugees in your own country,” Dumbledore said, a bit sadly.

A vicious look from Voldemort. “This should have been handled _generations_ ago,” he said, words sharp and precise as broken glass.

“It should have,” Dumbledore agreed, unexpectedly. “I fear that wizards’ lifespans make us particularly resistant to change. We have to live with the consequences for so long afterward, after all.”

And somehow, that signaled a conclusion to them both. Voldemort stepped back, turning away without formality. “Thanks, sir,” Harry said to the portrait. “When everyone’s here… we’ll send the Order in to see you.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Dumbledore agreed. Raising his voice: “Tom?”

Voldemort stopped without turning, his shoulders drawn up defensively. “Yes?”

“I kept my brandy behind the history of magic books. Please take it.”

“Thank you.”

And then with a flick of his wand Dumbledore made the canvas go blank, and Harry leapt to join Voldemort, who was frozen in the center of the office with an impossible snarl of feelings on his features. “Are you alright?”

Voldemort glanced at him. “You and I were both spared the burden of parents who would always see us as children,” he said. “Dumbledore, for some reason, believes that my life is _lacking_ in this humiliation.”

“I’d prefer to have parents, actually,” Harry objected. (He wouldn’t have said it if he thought Voldemort were actually listening to him at all, but.)

“The portrait is a good likeness, though,” Voldemort went on. “The optimistic idiot who charmed Dippet’s portrait made him unrealistically _competent_.” He strode across the office, pulling down the entire shelf of history of magic books. “ _Ah_ ,” he said as a row of bottles was revealed. “Here.” He passed Harry a few dusty bottles of brandy, in peach and raspberry and passionfruit.

“Great. I’ll go find tumblers, then?”

“There’s no need.” Taking a sleeplessness potion from their tote of supplies, he swallowed half, chose a bottle at random from Harry, and re-filled the potion with brandy. Another swallow, and a small shudder. “That is hideous,” he muttered. “I’ll be doing the rest of the casting tonight while incredibly drunk, if you don’t mind.”

“No, I don’t.” He would only keep his heartbreak to himself, seeing Voldemort so vulnerable and affected and pathetic and human. He followed him out, his insides aching.

 

True to his word, Voldemort was thoroughly drunk by the time they reached the ground floor, finishing off with the eight glowing circles that lined the edges of the Great Hall. “ _Tempus_ ,” he muttered with a flick of his wand, sighing when _2:50_ glowed in the air before them. “What’s next?”

“Um. I’ll get to the bank in a few hours. You need to write Wadha?” Harry suggested.

Voldemort considered for a moment. “Yes. Good boy.” He turned. “We’ll work in the Room of Requirement. It’s closer to the owlery.”

Voldemort didn’t speak aloud what they needed from the Room of Requirement, but when they opened it, he gave a short laugh: a sumptuous bedroom done up in dark oak and shades of red, at once inviting and unnervingly womb-like (and not enough windows for Harry’s liking, but there never were). “A facsimile of the bedroom of a Muggle barrister I stayed with in London,” he explained as he let Harry in. “I was twenty-one. Kept, essentially. A simpler time.” He settled deeply into the bed, plucking a spare scroll from the bedside table.

“It’s nice.” Harry sat beside him. “Uh, what can I do?”

“You can make Portkeys?”

“Yeah.”

Voldemort hummed, thinking. “Figure out how to return everyone’s wands,” he said. Then, summoning a quill, he ducked his head to begin writing.

But at some point after the first letter was drafted, Voldemort had slumped deep into the pillows, somewhere in an uneasy sleep. Harry eased the parchment from between his long fingers. “Uh, _Geminio_?” The parchment duplicated itself, five versions of Voldemort’s explanation of the circumstances here before him. He rolled out of bed to find envelopes.

One to Madame Maxime, one to Wadha. Who else had Dumbledore and Voldemort talked about? He reluctantly took Voldemort by one shoulder, shaking him awake. “Vol? Voldemort? No, stay there,” he groaned, pressing a hand against Voldemort’s scrawny chest as he tried to sit up in a panic.

“I _can’t_ , there isn’t time.” Voldemort scrubbed his hands over his face without opening his eyes.

“I’ve copied your letter. Who did you need to send it to? I’ve got Wadha’s and Madame Maxime’s already.”

Voldemort opened his eyes then, just enough to see the identical parchments spread across the bedspread. Unexpectedly, he scooped Harry’s chin up in a bony hand, drawing him close to kiss him deeply. “You’re so good,” he murmured against Harry’s mouth. Then, pulling back, he went business-like: “Devin Lynch. Write Ár Saoirse on there as well. I believe he’s staying in Dublin right now….” He watched Harry letter the envelope carefully. “Rektor Pravsky, Czech Institute of Magic, in Ostrava. And Demetra Spiros, with the Socratic Consortium in Thessaloniki. Mind the owls,” he said as Harry stuffed the parchments into their envelopes, “they might’ve gone feral by now.”

This was probably a joke. Harry could never tell. It didn’t matter, anyway, as Voldemort dropped almost immediately off to sleep once more.

So the owls were _not_ feral, thanks for asking (though their hunting skills had obviously improved, out of necessity, over the past few months), and the letters got sent, and Harry got a blessed few hours of sleep next to Voldemort late that night. They were awoken just past dawn with a flurry of returning owls. The first, a loose scroll dropped upon their chests from a very great height, was from Madame Maxime. It began, with deep scores in the parchment from the tip of her quill, _Why didn’t you tell us?_ underlined three times. Dublin’s Ár Saoirse chapter offered reinforcements, so did the Hajaya…. Food and medical supplies and house elves from the Czech Republic, and the same from Greece. _Thank god, thank god, thank god_.

After a few steadying breaths, Harry got up. “I’m going to the bank,” he murmured in Voldemort’s ear. As though this were a normal domestic scene, and a normal day, and a normal relationship. Voldemort was still too close to sleep to have much of an answer.

He worked alone that morning, making Portkeys out of handfuls of coins at a time. The faster he worked, the faster they’d be free. Maybe the Order would have ideas for distributing everyone’s wands. Or maybe they’d all gotten good enough at wandless magic that it wasn’t critical. He chewed on his lips enthusiastically as he worked.

Voldemort found him around noon, establishing Portkeys on the fifth floor. “You should’ve woken me,” he said by way of reproach.

Harry shrugged. “Why? This is my job.” He tucked another bag of Portkey-activated two pence into a tote. “You don’t even have to go back,” he added, having thought about it all this morning. “I can handle things at the hospital. I’ll make Draco return to the barracks somehow. You stay here, where there’s magic.”

But Voldemort shook his head. “Do you remember when I told you that I wasn’t your ward?” he asked.

“Uh, kind of.”

“Well, _circumstances_ have changed.” He let the word drip from his tongue. “Your Order can have as many copies of the treaty as they’d like, but you’ll be with me to deliver them. And then we’ll likely go directly to the barracks, for negotiations with the Muggles.” A grimace. “We’ll be in each other’s company up until the moment that peace is secured.”

“Right. You’re right.” Finishing up on this floor, he nodded Voldemort toward the staircase. “I don’t mind, you know.”

“I never wondered that you did,” Voldemort answered. “Let me try one of your Portkeys.”

Harry reached into his bag, pulling out one of the labelled bags. “To make sure it works?” he asked. “Here, this should take you to the fourth floor. In front of the Charms classroom.” Voldemort rolled the coin between his fingers a few times, apparently examining the magic, and then he disappeared. Harry listened for the sound of his re-appearance below.

A few minutes later, Voldemort emerged at the top of the staircase. “Excellent,” he said, returning the coin. “You’ll have to assign someone to oversee the transfer to Hogwarts, of course, as we may still be in negotiations.”

“Sure.” Someone strong and steady and trusting enough to believe in this cobbled-together plan. He wondered if Remus wanted the responsibility; or if he had been everyone’s source of stability and strength enough for one lifetime. “The foreign aid will be arriving tomorrow,” he said. “If you read the letters. Maybe even tonight, if the winds are good. Uh, will they be able to find the castle? It’s still, y’know, invisible.”

“Ah. Yes.” Voldemort thought. “And so it should remain. We’ll owl them Portkeys as well. As _porous_ as Portkeys make the castle” – obviously he was still dwelling on Dumbledore’s concern – “we can at least exercise some control by allowing that as the _only_ mode of transit into Hogwarts.”

“Right.” Another set of Portkeys finished; they continued down the corridor. “And I still don’t know how to get everyone’s wands back. Sorry,” he added. Voldemort didn’t answer, and Harry continued casting in anticipatory silence.

They made their way to the top of the castle, until all the Portkeys had been created. A brief stop at the owlery to send Portkeys and instructions to their foreign assistance. To the Room of Requirement to gather everything. And then…. Then. Harry looked to Voldemort, trying and failing to keep his anxiety off his face. “Back to Durham, then?”

“It seems so.” He raised his eyebrows. “Would you like to Apparate us?”

“No?” He couldn’t tell what Voldemort was playing at. “Why, do you need me to?”

“Practice,” Voldemort said. “I’ll fix anything, if you do it wrong.”

It was insignificant, sure, but also a generous and strangely trusting offer. “Thanks,” Harry muttered; and, looping his arm in Voldemort’s, he yanked a suction tube of magic around them both.

The Apparation brought them to the cell in solitary where they’d slept before. Harry did a quick inventory of his extremities, and looked over at Voldemort. “Alright?”

“Perfect.” Voldemort was looking at him thoughtfully. “I must rescind what I said yesterday; you’re not squandering your magic. It’s just… unconventional, in practice. You could become very powerful.”

“Thanks. I mean, I wasn’t offended.” He peered through the door’s porthole, to ensure the hallway was clear before letting them both out.

“I’d like to tutor you.”

Harry glanced back at Voldemort, unable to read his expression. Knowing Voldemort, though, this seemed like a distraction or misdirection from the shitty task ahead of them. A forced casualness. He could do that much for him. _Poor Voldemort_. “You have been,” he said in what he hoped was a steady, winning voice. “I’d never even tried wandless magic before. Uh, do you want to cast Glamour? Or should I?”

Voldemort shook his head. “Let them fear me,” he said, drawing himself up to enter the main floor of the hospital. He must practice making his robes billow behind him, Harry thought, tagging after him. Perhaps there was a spell for it.

The Order, they needed to find the Order. It was quieter than usual as they walked through the halls, less ambient noise from wizards mingling and talking and very quietly practicing magic in dark corners. He understood why when they reached the area of the dormitories: each of the bedrooms was closed, with a roster of the wizards it contained taped to the door. Lockdown.

“This is my fault,” he muttered, looking with dull horror at the nearest roster. Alongside some of the names were locations: clearly the first batch to be shipped off to servitude. Voldemort lay a hand on his shoulder and said nothing.

If nothing else, it did streamline the process of handing out Portkeys. There was magic padlocking the doors, the sort that would take more time to break than they had at the moment. But there was also a sliding grate on each of the doors, presumably meant to pass meals through. He rapped on it; it slid open and a girl’s dark eyes peered at him. “Portkeys,” he murmured, handing her a bag of change. “For tonight at midnight.”

She took the bag but frowned at him. “Who are you?” she asked lowly.

He could’ve laughed; he could’ve kissed her. The last person in Britain to not recognize Harry Potter, the Chosen One. He might finally be living up to the bloody title. “Nobody,” he said. “Just, be ready. Hogwarts, at midnight.”

Voldemort had his wand out, had it clutched tightly in case an officer should come. But… the hallways were free of them, too. “Where are they?” he said through his teeth.

“I dunno. Maybe we got lucky.” Voldemort snorted at this; Harry passed another bag of coins through a slot, to a very old and grateful wizard.

He only figured it out when he looked _up_ , though. The ceiling-mounted cameras hadn’t always been on, had they? He hadn’t noticed the glare of the red recording light previously, in any case. He touched Voldemort’s elbow, nodding upwards. “That’s how,” he said. “They’re only watching remotely.”

Voldemort followed his gaze. “Ah,” he said. “Then I suppose we’ve got a precious few more minutes before they arrive.”

Indeed they did. Harry had passed out the first dozen baggies of Portkeys when they heard the main entrance kicked open. (“Overkill,” Voldemort muttered with disdain.) “’ _Ey_!” a voice bellowed. “Hands up!” Then the scuffle of a fucking lot of soldiers in a fucking lot of riot gear charging down the hall toward them.

Harry looked around desperately; there were no alcoves or closets to slip into, from where they were. Ducking into a dormitory would put all those people in danger and _really_ , he’d done enough of that. Invisibility, then, to slip away. But as he raised his hands to cast it, Voldemort shoved them back down. “We’ll face them,” he murmured.

He saw the guns before he saw the soldiers, with the long barrels leading around the corner, glinting in the awful fluorescent light. And, with a crack of his wand, Voldemort encased the weapons at once in perfectly clear ice. “Your magic,” he said, reaching for Harry’s hand. He shoved as much magic as possible between them, draining his own, whatever he could do to help.

Some of the soldiers cried out, dropping the weapons to the floor. The spell had been inexact, also freezing some of their hands, so that pink frostbite bloomed across the skin. There were a dozen of them now, crowded into this hallway, and nobody wanted to step any closer to Voldemort.

“You need to go,” Voldemort said in a deadly calm voice. “Tell your commanding officers that we’ll be joining them at the barracks shortly, for negotiations.”

“You are _dangerous_ ,” one of the soldiers growled, his finger still on the trigger of his useless, frozen weapon.

Voldemort locked eyes with him. “Yes,” he said with a small smile. “I am. _Go_.” A swish of his wand (more of them flinched than not) and the soldier went slack, making an abrupt about-face for the door. The rest looked on in horror. “ _Go_ ,” Voldemort repeated. A larger gesture with his wand, and they all fell in line.

They had only turned the corner when Voldemort slumped against the wall, looking ashen. Panicked, Harry pressed their hands together, then pressed his body against Voldemort’s, the magic throbbing everywhere they touched. “Imperio?” he guessed.

“Yes.” Voldemort’s voice cracked. “It’s not intended as a spell for mass effect. That….” And then he broke off with a shudder, letting his head fall on Harry’s shoulder in a truly miserable way.

“Here.” He slipped the diadem from Voldemort’s finger, putting it on his own hand and pressing his palm over Voldemort’s heart. The discoloration spread farther along his hand, up his wrist, following his veins. Two Horcruxes together had to be more powerful than either of them alone, right? He unbuttoned the top of Voldemort’s robes to slip his hand inside, pressing his warm touch to Voldemort’s cold chest. “Does that help?”

“Yes.”

But then another bang behind them – the door of one of the nearby dormitories – and Voldemort swore in fluent French, trying his best to straighten up. Harry pressed the diadem back into his hand, shaking off the frigid tingling that had started in his own. And then –

The Order, flooding out of the dorm, rushing him, shouting a thousand rebukes and warnings and whatever else. They _had_ gotten good at wandless magic then, enough to break the locks. Dread crushing his insides, he threw himself in front of Voldemort.

A shove from behind, from Voldemort, unexpectedly, that threw him into Ginny’s arms. (She caught him like the athlete she was, Merlin bless her.) Voldemort was cornered regardless, but he stood tall. “Here.” With a snap of his fingers, he had an armful of scrolls. He pressed one to Moody’s chest with just a bit too much force. “A treaty, to see us through to peacetime.” More scrolls slapped into the hands of Tonks and Kingsley and Molly and Remus. “Harry and I drafted it yesterday. In the midst of setting up Portkeys within Hogwarts and securing foreign aid.”

(Harry had had nothing to do with the treaty’s drafting, but he’d swear it on his life anyway, if it’d help.) He picked himself out of Ginny’s arms, carefully edging back before Voldemort. “Please,” he said to the Order, now silent in strangled disbelief. “We’ve tried so hard to fix this. The Portkeys will activate at midnight, then… when we’re safe….” He spread his hands wide. _Do what you will._

A sickening silence stretched before them. Finally, Ginny spoke up: “What are you using for Portkeys?”

 _Oh thank god_. Her hands were outstretched, and he handed her a tote. He used the hand that had been darkened by the Horcrux, and her brief look of horror shot regret straight through him. But there wasn’t time to explain, there wasn’t time for anything. “Coins. Muggle coins.” (And in spite of goddamn everything, he caught the way Arthur’s face lit up briefly at this.) “It worked well last time,” he said, nodding to Hermione, pressed toward the back of the crowd. “The castle should be able to accommodate everyone… at least short term. It’s still invisible thanks to you all, so we’ll be a little safer.” He surveyed their faces: uniformly tight, dark, scared, untrusting. Sod it.

But Ginny, again: “Right, we’ll get the rest of them distributed then. Come on, Ron.” She pressed the tote into her brother’s chest, making him grunt with the unexpected weight of the coins. “Tonks, you figured out the fortressing charm, could you let everyone out, please? And we should probably keep a few people stationed at the front entrance, to turn away any more soldiers….” She looked expectantly over the Order.

“We’ll go,” Molly said, looping her arm through Arthur’s. “Kingsley?” He nodded his assent.

“Thanks, Mum.” Back to Harry: “Is that it?”

“Well, we’ll need everyone’s wands, I don’t know how to get to them….”

“They’re kept in a safe at the front office,” Voldemort volunteered behind him. When Harry glanced back, he looked fucking _awful_ : he was obviously propped up by the wall, and the thinnest trickle of blood ran over his bottom lip. Christ.

“Got it,” Bill said. “Fred? George?”

“Yep.”

“And….” Harry suppressed something like a sigh. “Where’s Draco? We’ll need him to get into the barracks.” Another sucking silence. “ _What_?” he said, his stomach dropping. “Is Draco okay?”

“He is,” Ginny jumped in. “He just… he held off a lot of soldiers yesterday. For me,” she added. “He’s still healing up, is all.”

“ _God_ ,” Harry sighed. Seeing Ginny here had given him hope that she and Draco had been unscathed yesterday, after he couldn’t rescue them from that scene. “Right, we’ll go to him, then.”

“I’ll take you,” Hermione said.

“Thanks, Hermione.” He looked to Voldemort. “Is that all?”

He licked the blood from his lips before answering. “Alastor,” he said, very deliberately. “We’ll be meeting with the Muggle officers this afternoon, for negotiations. Would you join us?”

Moody looked first startled and then suspicious, either that Voldemort would recognize him or make this offer. But finally, knuckles white on his staff, he answered, “Yes.”

“Brilliant,” he muttered. And with that, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, landing with a hollow thump.

More fucking chaos. “Leave him!” – “Is he dead?” – “Tie him up.” Sighing, Harry stepped in, picking Voldemort up under the armpits ( _had he always been this light_?) to sling over his shoulders. He turned to the Order once more. “If Voldemort dies, I die,” he said, with more patience than was warranted. “I thought Snape had already…. Where’s Snape?” he asked suddenly, horrified. He’d never been without Lupin, but now Lupin stood alone, face ashen.

“Snape… has reason to fear Voldemort,” Lupin said. “When we realized you were both in the hallway, he managed to Apparate. Or disappear, at any rate. He didn’t say where, or why.”

Oh god, one more problem to sort out. “Right,” he sighed. “He’ll turn up. I’ve already convinced Voldemort to do quite a lot of good, I can ask him not to kill Snape either….” He shifted Voldemort’s weight. “For now though, I have to save Voldemort. Sorry.”

“Here.” Alastor stepped forward, casting Mobilicorpus with Harry’s own wand and then handing it back to him. Harry caught Voldemort’s sleeve, keeping him from drifting away.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll find you, when we take the barracks.” Alastor’s expression only darkened further, but he nodded.

Then, back to solitary, somehow the safest place in this hospital. It’d been ages since he’d done any magic with his wand, and directing Voldemort through the hallways with it now felt horrifically restrictive. ( _Sorry_ , he mouthed as Voldemort’s face only barely avoided collision with a column.) He levitated Voldemort into bed, and then looked at him hopelessly.

Magic, he needed magic. But he’d given Voldemort _so much_ magic in the previous day; why would he be so fragile now? The magical vacuum must have a cumulative effect. Really, he just needed to get Voldemort out of this space as early as possible. Shoving his wand in his pocket, he stretched out his hands to gather the stray wisps of magic that still remained in the hospital’s foul air.

He unbuttoned Voldemort’s robes fully down to his waist, a bit for access and a bit to make sure that his faint heartbeat still fluttered behind his ribs. And he lay Voldemort’s hand, the one with the shrunken diadem on it, in the center of his chest, not actually sure that increased contact with the Horcrux would help but certainly it couldn’t _hurt_. Right? He shoved the first surge of magic into Voldemort’s skin.

A wince, a groan. Another surge. “Voldemort?” he asked carefully. _Please, please tell me what to do._

Pain snarled his features, but he wasn’t properly awake, couldn’t save himself. Harry wiped a bright new trickle of blood from the corner of Voldemort’s mouth. Then, gazing down at it thoughtfully, he frowned.

His own blood was always the answer, for Voldemort. And whatever curse the diadem had brought upon him… made his veins particularly dark and prominent and beautiful. Once more sliding the diadem onto his own hand, he conjured a tourniquet and a syringe.

His hands shook, but his veins bulged accommodatingly, and he drew his own blood with some abandon. Another tourniquet conjured for Voldemort, as he prodded at the man’s pale and skinny elbows. With one hand he injected his blood; with the other he pressed magic into his heart.

Then, a gasp and a shiver. “Stay still,” Harry said, alarmed, grabbing his elbow to hold his arm steady. “I’m giving you blood, and magic.”

Voldemort blinked a few times, orienting himself. He obviously didn’t understand yet what Harry was doing, but allowed him to keep doing it. “For a moment, I thought I was nine years old again,” he murmured, looking around at his surroundings. “The orphanage’s matron sent me to a sanatorium a few times, for electro-shock therapy. Back when such a thing was still fashionable, of course. She thought it would _improve my disposition_.”

It was irrelevant to everything, but it was so good to hear Voldemort conscious and speaking again. “I’m sorry.”

“But this, somehow, is more depressing.” He sighed deeply. “It seems that if the Order should like to kill me, they know how. A thoroughly passive way, too, to evade their own culpability,” he added with an unamused smile. “Some Muggle prisons kill their prisoners with dehydration, you know. That’s not the official cause of death, of course, but….” He waved his free hand. “It sounds like a horrible way to die. And equally passive, on the guards’ behalf. But… I believe what I feel is analogous. It is a slow and horrifying process. Here.” He pressed a finger over his own puncture wound, as Harry withdrew the syringe.

“Nobody is dying,” Harry said firmly, stabbing the syringe into his veins again. “Not today, at least. Not you and not me and not Moody and not Snape and not any of the Muggles we’re going to be meeting with later.”

“Snape.” Voldemort’s interest was piqued. “Where _was_ Snape? He’d only ever been with… Lupin, you said?”

“Yeah.” Harry sighed inwardly; now was not the time for sorting out whatever Snape was doing. “Lupin said he Apparated, before the Order broke out. He didn’t know why.”

Voldemort’s lips curled. “Because I am terrifying.”

“Seems that way.” But Voldemort being wry and animated again warmed him deep inside, made everything seem a bit less dire. “Does this help?” He nodded to the half-full syringe stuck in his arm.

“It likely will. Here.” And Voldemort rolled onto an elbow, taking hold of the syringe to relieve Harry of the awkward contortion he was maintaining. “So there’s a ceasefire, then?”

“What, with you and the Order? I guess so,” Harry shrugged. “They know that if you die, I die, and that seems to be enough for them.”

But Voldemort frowned. “They seem willing to sacrifice a lot for you.” He didn’t say it as a reminder, or a sweet gesture, but in actual wonderment. “Are you really that special?”

He’d wondered the same himself for awhile now. His exceptionalism, and their protection of him, only had to hold out for a bit longer. Just through negotiations with the Muggles, that’s it. “Sunk cost fallacy,” he shrugged. Voldemort actually laughed.

After three syringes of blood, Voldemort was on his feet again. He took Harry’s hand, examining it. The discoloration had gone down with the blood drawn, interestingly, even if his veins were still particularly visible. “How did you know what to do?” He took his Horcrux back.

“Dunno.” Harry buttoned the top of his robes again with something like affection. “You’ve just needed a lot of my blood, up to now.”

“I have, haven’t I.” He stood, straightening his robes. “To the military base, then?”

“Yeah. Well, to Draco, who’s been there. Could you do that thingy that Wadha did for me, making a Portkey out of someone’s memories?”

Voldemort hummed. “Is that our only option?” Harry nodded. “Well, then I suppose I must.”

The mood throughout the hospital was considerably lightened, as witches and wizards milled the halls, waiting for official word of anything. Bill had broken into the safe (“Trivial,” he scoffed) and everyone was still in the process of finding their own wand. Kingsley had taken on PR, projecting his voice magically throughout the hospital to explain that nobody was being held here, obviously, but the Ministry couldn’t guarantee safety until an agreement was made with the Muggles, and accommodations were being provided at Hogwarts. Most people stayed.

And Hermione had brought Draco from whatever convalescent corner of the hospital he’d been crouched in. He’d obviously taken a battering, as bumps and bruises and scars covered every bit of exposed skin. A machine gun had been jammed against his windpipe so enthusiastically that the barrel left a perfect little circular bruise there. Harry couldn’t help staring as he entered the dorm where Draco now lay. “Draco, I’m so sorry – “

Draco gave him a cold smile. “Of course. Weasley’s got a life debt to me now. Maybe I’ll make her my bodyguard; she throws some nice hexes.” Then, quieter and far less mocking, he added, “Is he here?”

“Yes.” He had gone a bit ahead, specifically to warn Draco of such; Voldemort was a few paces behind him, his movement slow and infirm. “Ah, yeah, here,” he said as Voldemort entered.

Unexpectedly, Draco crawled out of bed and fell to his knees (even if he couldn’t avoid wincing at the movement), fastidiously avoiding eye contact with Voldemort. “My Lord,” he murmured, now unnervingly pliant. “What do you require of me?”

Harry could only gawp at this. He _had_ forgotten how fearsome Voldemort was to most people, most of all his followers. He looked to Voldemort, who gestured him out of the way. He could add nothing to this scene.

“Up,” Voldemort said indifferently. (Draco sprang to his feet, still avoiding eye contact, and it was the most pitiful thing Harry had ever seen.) “Harry said you brought information of the barracks here.”

Draco glanced sidelong at Harry under his lashes, still incredulous that he and Voldemort were allied. “Yes,” he said. “The Muggles deceived us, though – it was supposed to be a repatriation – a selective redistribution – not _this_ – “

Frowning, Voldemort actually lay a long finger over Draco’s sniveling mouth. He fell silent. “I don’t need your explanations,” he said. “I need your memories, to create a Portkey. Picture the space.”

Draco nodded; Voldemort touched his wand to Draco’s temple, extracting a shimmering memory. This he held aloft as he crossed the room, dropping it onto a blanket folded at the end of a cot. The magic spread, giving the blanket a faint glow. “If you’re joining us, go wait with Alastor Moody,” he said to Draco.

“Yes, sir.” And, clearly desperate to not be in Voldemort’s presence, Draco ducked out, bruises now even darker against his paled complexion.

Harry took the blanket from Voldemort. “Can you tell if it worked?”

“We’ll learn at the critical moment.”

“Brill.” He tossed the blanket over his shoulder. “Isn’t it… doesn’t it make you uncomfortable, to have the Death Eaters slavering like that?”

“Why should I feel uncomfortable?” It was a sly question; Voldemort already saw what he was getting at.

“Don’t you ever want to, I don’t know, just talk with them. Normally.”

A short laugh from Voldemort. “No.” He gestured Harry out of the dorm.

“Oh.” He raised his eyebrows at Voldemort. “Your meetings must run very long, then.”

Voldemort was only amused by his impertinence these days. It was the closest thing to normal that they had. “’Love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of man, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage,’” he quoted, “’but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.’ And we’ll be surrounded by the Death Eaters shortly. Please avert your gaze if they upset you.”

“Yeah, about that….” They were heading toward the front of the building now, where the Order had congregated, and some of the Ministry officials, and everyone else who was setting things to rights. “Don’t kill them, please. Whoever’s in charge right now…. It’d only make everything worse. And the Muggles will never work with us.”

Voldemort’s mouth was set in a tight line; obviously he’d already put some thought into this. “Don’t be gauche,” he said. “It would give the Muggles entirely the wrong impression. Of course.”

And it was dismissive, but that’s as much reassurance as Harry needed; or as he thought Voldemort would consent to. He skipped a few steps ahead of Voldemort, to once more be the barrier between them all.

In addition to Moody were Tonks, Kingsley, Professor McGonagall, Amelia Bones, and a few Ministry officials whom Harry recognized but could not name. Draco hovered nearby, miserably. Apparently Ginny had handed off the remaining Portkeys to Hogwarts to Draco; and suddenly Harry had reservations about allowing the _entire_ British population into the castle. But he held his tongue.

Before they left for the barracks, Harry found Remus. “If we’re still there at midnight, could you make sure everyone gets to Hogwarts okay?” he asked. “Everything’s in place, really. We just can’t have anyone left behind.”

“Of course.” And unexpectedly, Remus pulled him into a crushing hug. “You’ve done so well,” he murmured into Harry’s shoulder. “And for as little as we’ve trusted you….”

Harry let out a laugh. “You have trusted me _far too much_ ,” he assured Remus. “We’ll celebrate properly once these negotiations are finished.”

“Harry?” Voldemort asked, across the room. The blanket was spread across a circular table, the ad hoc committee gathered around it.

“Yeah.” And Harry slipped beside Voldemort, and the Portkey was activated, and they were off.

 

The military installation had higher ceilings and more windows than the hospital, but the same damp air and hideous lighting. It must be meant to demoralize them all, Harry decided. And Draco, for a moment the group’s expert, pointed in a direction. “The officers are usually that way.”

“I assume they’ll find us,” Voldemort said dryly. Pre-emptively, he threw a shield around the group – so that when they once more heard the clatter of soldiers springing to deal with them deeper into the building, he didn’t so much as flinch.

He strode forward, wand held above his head as a warning. “Wand at your hip, your _hip_ , it’s Auror protocol with Muggles,” Moody muttered to him agitatedly: the Aurors and Ministry were all already in this stance. “Unless you’d like your ruddy hand shot off.” And Harry stopped breathing for a moment as he wondered how receptive Voldemort was to constructive criticism. Unnecessarily, because with a surprised glance, Voldemort silently dropped his wand to hip level.

The building was approximately U-shaped, and when they reached the center of it, Moody softly said, “Ah.” The external door before them was transparent; beyond it was a fleet of tanks, apparently unmanned but still _waiting_. Along the perpendicular hallway was the mess hall, all in plexiglass walls, with the Death Eaters miserably sequestered inside, looking toward the far end of the hall. Where there was, barricading an ascending staircase, a large formation of soldiers.

“Stand down,” one in the front, the most decorated one, boomed. “Stand down and take your place with the rest of your kind – “ he nodded toward the mess hall “ – and we’ll show you clemency.”

Up to this point, Voldemort had been on the far side of the group, away from the mess hall, so they couldn’t properly see him. But as he stepped forward, there were audible gasps from the mess hall – and then a flurry of _thud_ s as the Death Eaters threw themselves to the ground, kneeling or stretched flat along the linoleum. It startled the soldiers – and then infuriated them. One officer peeled off from the formation, pounding at the plexiglass. “Get up! Get _up_!” Of course they didn’t.

It _was_ an impressive display, Harry had to admit; and Voldemort drew himself up just a bit more. “We are here for negotiations,” he addressed the group of soldiers. “And perhaps we’ll show _you_ clemency. I assume your generals are upstairs?” He raised his eyebrows at the protected staircase behind them, stepping even closer.

The soldiers had diversified their weapons, and good for them. There was the sound of guns being cocked, but also tasers and net cannons got drawn. At the edges, a few of the soldiers were muttering into walkie-talkies. Kingsley threw up another shield, one that hovered just inches before the soldiers’ faces and throbbed bright red so they’d get the bloody point. “You won’t win,” he addressed them. “Magic will always be more effective and more diverse than your weapons.”

“Even if you seize our wands again, we’ve all gotten very good at wandless magic,” Tonks added. “We’ve had _nothing but time_ to practice, locked up as we were.” She watched this realization bloom on their faces with satisfaction. “But we’re in agreement, that we’ve hidden from the Muggles – you all,” she clarified a bit cheekily, “for long enough. We’re here to discuss things.”

The soldiers looked to one another: it was clear that they really didn’t have the gravitas to discuss anything themselves further. One of the soldiers who had been on the radio stepped up, frowning. “But who are you?” he asked. “Who are you to offer us anything, when we’ve got your Minister Scrimgeour here?”

Harry choked, artlessly interrupting the deliberate silence. Voldemort’s shoulders were drawn up tensely, his knuckles white around his wand. Harry looked around: the rest of their group looked distinctly unsurprised. _Fuck_. Fuck whatever secret the Order had kept from him, and fuck whatever consequences would come to him – and to Snape, god, that must be why he had fled – as a result. He forced his breathing to remain calm; beside him, Professor McGonagall placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. _Everyone knew._

“The Minister will join us, of course,” Voldemort said, and Harry heard the way his voice was slightly strangled, even if nobody else did.

The mass of soldiers was easing slightly, or resigned perhaps. It was beyond them, anyway. More low, tense conversations over the radio, and a minute later the thunderous sound of footfall above them (Moody’s eye twisted upward to look through the ceiling, but his face remained impassive). “Are these the wizards?” the PM asked brightly as he descended the staircase halfway, flanked by both soldiers and plain-clothed security. “Excellent, they told me it would only be a matter of time. We’ll take tea in the war room. This way.” He motioned them upstairs; both Voldemort and Kingsley brought their erected shields with them as they followed.

As they left, Draco caught Harry’s sleeve, silently nodding to the mess hall. The Death Eaters were unguarded now, as the hallway of soldiers also followed the Minister as though to provide a buffer. Harry motioned for Draco to go. And then he slipped beside Voldemort. “He…. They told me he was dead,” he said lowly. Voldemort said nothing, his face full of cold fury. “Scrimgeour _hates_ me,” Harry went on. “The Order can keep peace on my behalf, but he’s not going to.”

“It’s a bit late to account for that.” Still, he pulled Harry in front of him as they ascended, to serve as a human shield. He was happy to do it.

As this was an under-utilized and remote military base and not an impressive center of operations, the war room was modest: a reinforced room with a long table in the center and maps lining the walls. Scrimgeour had been brought in as well, held against a far wall as a soldier pressed the barrel of a gun diagonal across his chest; beside him, the woman who also had on Minister’s formal robes, must be Acting Minister Urteil. They both greeted the Aurors and other Ministry members civilly; but when Harry and Voldemort entered at the rear, Scrimgeour’s features went hard. Harry sighed inwardly. He had been prepared to threaten to kill himself if things went badly, as both the Order and Voldemort would seem to do a ridiculous amount to keep him safe. Scrimgeour, on the other hand, might welcome his death.

There were name placards where the PM would sit, a few more government personnel, and a couple generals. “If we’d known earlier who was coming, we would’ve made you placards as well,” the PM said apologetically as they found seats.

“No matter,” Voldemort told him. Raising his wand (would the Muggles ever _not_ flinch at spellcasting), he conjured a name plate for each of the wizards and witches at the table. Harry got one too, as though he were a real person; he flipped it over to look at it. _Harry Potter. Peacemaker_. Cool.

The PM had wet, beady eyes and a sort of avuncular ease about him; it’s not that he was charismatic or likeable, but he would at least be simpler to deal with than the military officers (who still lined the edges of the room, as a sort of pre-emptive warning). “When Rufus and Ursula came to my office yesterday, they didn’t say there’d be an entire committee to meet with. Fascinating,” he said, looking around at them. “Lucius Malfoy introduced himself when I arrived this morning, and the Carrow twins, of course. Charming, very thoughtful, some brilliant ideas….”

“The Death Eaters are bigoted terrorists,” Tonks cut in. (Voldemort didn’t even protest this, his expression perfectly indifferent.) “Everything they’ve told the Muggles is likely wrong, and certainly hateful.”

A careful moment of silence, as the Minister mouthed the phrase _Death Eaters_ to himself. It clearly hadn’t been how Lucius or anyone had introduced themselves, for some obvious reasons. “Well, perhaps we should invite them up here, to offer another viewpoint?” he suggested politely.

“The Death Eaters belong to me,” Voldemort said. “They do what I ask of them, and that will include calling off the repatriation effort.”

The Minister had been mostly avoiding looking at Voldemort, strange and intimidating and inhuman as he was. He squinted at Voldemort’s placard ( _Lord Voldemort. Dark Lord._ ) as though it would explain anything. As he did, Scrimgeour squared off in his seat: “Yes, why _are_ you here?” he demanded of Voldemort. He looked around the rest of the table for answers too: “Why would he ever be useful?”

“Ah, yes.” Voldemort snapped his fingers, producing scrolls. “Welcome back, wherever you came from,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Harry and I drafted a treaty, to see us through to peacetime.” He slid two copies across the table; Scrimgeour stopped his with the tip of his cane, as though reluctant to actually touch it.

“Harry is a child, and an antagonist of the Ministry,” Scrimgeour said.

“I’m seventeen,” Harry objected, uselessly.

“We also established Hogwarts as a safe haven, arranged for transit there for all of wizarding Britain, and secured foreign aid. Really, we’ve already been over this with everybody else. And the Portkeys will open at midnight, so shall we continue?” Voldemort spun a pocket watch between his fingers meaningfully.

Both Scrimgeour and Urteil were furious, of course, but… it’d be impolitic to have this conversation in front of the Muggles. At least, that’s what Harry hoped would outweigh their anger. Scrimgeour turned deliberately to the Muggle Minister: “We’ve had an International Statute of Secrecy for most of this century,” he said. “An agreement that Muggles couldn’t know of wizards, at least not at large. My predecessor likely made you aware of our existence” – the PM made a sound of acknowledgment – “and little else. We’re generally a self-sustaining community. And vastly outnumbered. You understand, it could be dangerous to expose ourselves to the larger world.”

The PM nodded vigorously, apparently wanting to be a good ally. “You deserve protection,” he said. “Your culture and your way of life deserve protection. So us taking the, er, magical Muggles, it’d help everyone really.”

“Muggleborns,” Minerva offered him the term. “And they’re wizards as well. Some of the best wizards, really.”

Finally the PM’s accommodating exterior cracked, just the slightest bit. “But all that power… why haven’t you solved any world problems with magic? It seems so simple. And so…” he grappled for a politic word and couldn’t find one “so _selfish_ to let us die, of causes you could fix.”

The room exploded a bit at this, as everyone attempted to explain at once. Of course they couldn’t; they’d be enslaved by Muggles the next time they turned around; magic is more complicated than that; and you can’t make something from nothing anyway; and really things like hunger aren’t from actual scarcity but from infrastructure; and it’d disrupt their international politics; to say nothing of how badly it’d unbalance the economy; and some wizarding communities are in more precarious countries than others; and out of respect for tradition.

And they were all very good explanations, and the PM looked a bit shell-shocked by the time the shouting had gone down a bit. “I suppose,” he muttered, “but….”

Voldemort leaned forward, also having sat back and merely listened to everyone’s explanations. “Actually,” he said to the Minister, “you and I are of the same mind. I propose that, in exchange for the freedom and safety of the wizards of Britain, you should pick a problem and we will solve it. Ongoing, if you’d like. Though as Minerva said, we can’t make resources from nothing” (for that’d been her contribution to their objections; she looked at Voldemort in surprise at hearing her name in his mouth). “We won’t fight your wars for you. And most wizards are very bad at technology, so perhaps we shouldn’t build your missiles either. But would you like the ice caps refrozen? Or London’s pollution punted over the sea? Or magical barriers over your airspace?”

“We really don’t have those sorts of resources,” Rufus objected.

Voldemort sneered at him. “I’ll do it,” he said. “Harry will help.”

“Yeah, I will.”

The Ministry employees were looking between them incredulously; the Order members had their gazes carefully averted, apparently still in disbelief at Harry’s… allegiance? Loyalty? Whatever it is they had inferred about him. Urteil frowned, not just at Voldemort but both of them. “What _are_ you playing at, really?”

Voldemort made a frustrated noise, throwing his hands up so that his sleeves fluttered like bats. “Why shouldn’t you believe that I’m invested in the _security of wizarding Britain_?” he said. “If there’s _anything_ you’ve gathered about my politics by now – “

“What I know of your _politics_ is that you’ve never had reason to do anything that doesn’t benefit you,” Urteil said. “Why, will you begin recruiting Muggles? Attempt to take over _their_ government instead?”

“I’d have to, wouldn’t I, once all the wizards were enslaved or dead,” Voldemort snapped.

“Nobody’s enslaving the wizards – “ the Muggle Minister attempted to break in. (A noble effort, but futile.)

“ _Why are you doing this_?” Urteil cried, rising from her seat.

And Harry sprang from his faster than Voldemort, holding him down, ready to jump on the table as a human shield if necessary. Voldemort’s claws were in his hands, pushing him away, but he held firm. “For me,” he said, holding Urteil’s gaze. “Because I only ever wanted the fighting to stop, and I’ve given up everything else for this… alliance” (he tried the word out; it didn’t feel bad in his mouth). “I’m powerful because Voldemort is powerful, the way we’re connected. But….” He hoped Voldemort wouldn’t hate him for what he would say next. “But it goes the other way too, that Voldemort has been powerless without me recently. I’ve been keeping him alive for weeks now, by sharing my magic. The only really powerful things he could do, would be things I agreed on. Like saving everyone here. It can be like checks and balances, do you see?” Sucking silence; he went on in a slightly more desperate tone. “And we’d work with the Ministry, and we’d work with the Order, and everyone else that we’ve got to. Just… let us save the world.”

Urteil was white; Scrimgeour was red. Neither of them spoke.

After a crushing silence, Moody finally said, “You’ll both be under house arrest. For the duration of whatever the Muggles want done. Possibly longer.”

Oh god, he could cry with relief. “Sure,” he said. “Yeah, that’s fine. Vol?” he prompted.

“Yes.” His tone was clipped and precise, betraying no emotion. He looked back toward the Muggle PM. “What _do_ you want, then?”

 _Thank god, thank god, thank god._ Harry sank back into his seat, only belatedly noting that he was shaking. He reached for Voldemort’s hand under the table; unexpectedly, Voldemort let him.

 

That was their evening, then: deliberating with the Muggles on what sort of magical solutions would be helpful, and magically feasible, and a fair trade for British wizards’ autonomy. It became a lot of conference calls and charts and at one point the Muggles even brought out a computer and a projector, which was an excellent novelty to the purebloods in the room. The PM didn’t have to make his decision that night, of course, but he was thrilled, chirruping about how much political capital this would garner him. The berk.

Near the end, Voldemort kept his pocketwatch on the table, in anticipation of the Portkeys’ activation. Harry slid a few spare pence toward Scrimgeour and Urteil, who each regarded the coins skeptically; and the Muggles had a few good giggles at the wizards passing around their useless currency as though it were precious. They’d see.

The Muggles were down to a decision of magically-fertilized fields or a shield over the entire island to deflect missiles, when Voldemort cleared his throat. “We must continue this tomorrow,” he said. “Right now, we’ve got somewhere to go.”

“Where?” one of the parliament members frowned.

Voldemort gave her a tight smile. “Somewhere a great deal safer than here.” He rose. “You may join us downstairs. An entire building of wizards disappearing at once would be a sight worth seeing, I should think.” And the Muggles gaped at him, and leapt from their chairs, and followed.

The Death Eaters downstairs were quiet, and chastised, and terrified. Except for Draco, who was standing on a table, his voice magically amplified to shout directions. “Right, keep everything on your person. Don’t hold onto anyone else; Morgana forbid you’ve got a different Portkey location from your lover. Find each other once we’re at the castle. Three minutes to go.” He happened to look back when they entered. “My Lord.” He slid from the table, moving to kneel, and the rest of the room make equally panicked motions.

“ _Up_ , you idiots,” Voldemort said, watching them in alarm. “You’re holding a _Portkey_ , honestly, don’t go flinging yourselves at the ground when it’s about to open….” And Harry was still laughing when their Portkeys activated, pulling them away to safety.

 

He and Voldemort had both chosen Portkey destinations in the Great Hall, to more quickly seize control of things when they arrived. But there almost seemed to be no need to: the French and Irish supplies had arrived already, and the others would be coming shortly. The wizards were in a bit of chaos, attempting to find one another again, ensure that everyone had made it through the Portkey successfully. But it was a simple, un-anxious sort of chaos. The Hogwarts faculty were back in their element, setting up tents and dividers to create something like makeshift dormitories. And Scrimgeour’s public return had already become known; he was surrounded by a great deal of Ministry employees the last time Harry saw him among the crowds.

Harry slid up beside Remus, who was distributing blankets off a great pallet. “So, Scrimgeour’s not dead,” he said, he tried out, conversationally.

Remus winced. “No. The Order had him in custody while things… settled. We released him shortly before the Muggles captured us. We had to lie to you, for your own sake and for Snape’s.”

“Yeah, about Snape…. Tell him that I’ve warned Voldemort, if he kills Snape that I’m killing myself.”

Remus couldn’t look less surprised at this declaration, for some reason. “Actually – “ He gestured behind himself, where Snape was pressed into a shadowy corner, speaking to Horace Slughorn and a few witches whom Harry didn’t recognize. “We, ah, anticipated that you might make an ultimatum like that. That you’ve already offered yourself up on behalf of everyone else’s peace….” He broke off, shaking his head with a queer smile.

“Voldemort told me I’m the Gordian knot holding our entire world together.”

“He’s correct.” A pause. “It doesn’t sound like a particularly _pleasant_ position to be in, though.”

“No, it’s what I want. Look.” He produced the name placard that Voldemort had created for him at the meeting, that he’d pocketed as they left: _Harry Potter. Peacemaker._ “If I apply to the Ministry again, it’ll be as a diplomat next time.”

Remus was still smiling, as though Harry had said something particularly amusing. But all he said was, “It will suit you.”

 

When the din from the initial transfer had died down a bit, Voldemort amplified his voice to echo through the castle. “Wizards and witches of Britain, welcome to Hogwarts. The castle will serve as our fortress until the negotiations with the Muggles are complete. We won’t be required to live in secrecy any longer, and we’ll be guaranteed our autonomy.” This got distinct reactions, from the masses of people who hadn’t known of the meetings, or negotiations, or anything that had happened recently, really. The ambient noise again grew louder with conversations.

Voldemort frowned but continued: “Nobody is required to stay, but all are welcome to. Maintain peace and order for as long as you’re here. We’ll give the all-clear within the week.”

And that was it: he dropped his wand from his throat and turned to go. He was _uncomfortable_ in this crowd, Harry realized by his tense posture. Even after his treatment so far had been a mixture of being merely ignored or civilly barely-acknowledged. He ran after Voldemort, at least as curious as he was concerned.

“Will they need us for anything else?” Voldemort asked as Harry fell in step with him.

“I don’t think so. I mean, things are normal enough for everyone to take care of by themselves, it looks like.”

“Then, would you join me on the Astronomy tower? I only assume it will be empty,” Voldemort said, at Harry’s inquiring look.

“Sure.”

And the air up there was cold and crisp, and the tower was bright with the light of the nearly-full moon. Voldemort brought them to a bench that overlooked the grounds, conjuring warm blankets to wrap around themselves. Suddenly he felt like crying, desperately sad for no real reason. They’d done it, hadn’t they?

Voldemort humored him by allowing him to rest his head on his chest. “What’s next, then?” he murmured, not quite wanting to hear the answer.

But Voldemort laughed softly at the question. “You sentimental sod,” he said. “ _House arrest_ is next, how does that suit you?” A pause. “I would agree to stay in that home they gave you when you were employed in the Ministry,” he said. “The Panopticon would still be somewhere inside, and it was a bloody expensive commission, so….”

“Right. I’ll ask. Or you can ask, I guess.” He pressed a playful kiss to the hollow of Voldemort’s throat. “You were so good with everyone today. A true gentleman.”

Voldemort only snorted at this. “Yes, well, only because I didn’t have magic to spare on killing anyone.”

Harry slapped his chest gently. “Really,” he insisted.

But Voldemort wanted to say something else; he spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “This is for you,” he said. “Regardless of what you thought you were doing when you told the Minister as much. And obviously I have vested interest in keeping you alive, and obviously I can’t rule over the wizarding world if it were all turned to ash. But it’s also that… so many people have sacrificed so much for you, their safety and happiness and lives.” He still spoke of this in incredulous wonderment, reflecting on it like a foreign and unbelievable concept. “ _Are_ you special?” he asked, squinting at Harry in something like confusion. “Certainly, this effect you have… it gives you a certain power. One that is worth preserving, I think.”

Dumbledore had told him once that Voldemort couldn’t love, and perhaps that was true. Perhaps that was the source of his bewilderment at all this. “Vol,” he sighed, his heart breaking the tiniest bit. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m special _because_ of what everyone’s sacrificed for me. Maybe we all are. That’s just… that’s what love is.”

Voldemort hummed thoughtfully. “’It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important,’” he quoted. “Is that what it is, then? Are you the rose?”

“Each of us are.” Harry thought. “Because love’s like… it feels a bit like taking on a piece of another person’s soul inside you. And they’ve got a piece of yours,” he tried out. “And you’ll do whatever you can to keep those bits of each other’s souls safe.”

Voldemort looked at him first in surprise, then softening into comprehension. “Ah.”

“Actually, it feels exactly like that.” And, pressing his warmth closer to Voldemort in the midst of the cold night, he didn’t have to say anything more.

 

**Author's Note:**

> An incomplete list of inspirations and allusions:
> 
> Voldemort’s interest in prophecies, the conceit of Harry and Voldemort traveling the world, and the general way that they interact are inspired by (the amazing but tragically unfinished) [How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Lord Voldemort, by Cheryl bites](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3542099/1/How-I-Learned-To-Stop-Worrying-And-Love-Lord-V).
> 
> The question of whether Voldemort can love is put to good use in [nevermind the end, by slexenskee](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3099083/chapters/6714275).
> 
> The idea that the Horcrux makes contact particularly pleasant comes from [Again and Again, by Athy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/439865/chapters/749908).
> 
> “Indifference is the deadweight of history” is a quote by Antonio Gramsci.
> 
> “The banality of evil” is a phrase made famous by Hannah Arendt.
> 
> “Love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of man, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage, but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails” comes from Machiavelli’s _The Prince_. (Which is likely satire but Voldemort is totally the type to take it at face value.)
> 
> “’It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important” is a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's _The Little Prince_.
> 
> When Ede swears in ‘Rabia’s name,’ she’s referring to Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya, a Sufi mystic.
> 
> The mantra that Voldemort teaches Harry, “Bakashti otem,” is Hebrew for “I am seeking you.” (At least biblical Hebrew; I don't know modern.)
> 
>  _The Unexpurgated Gazette_ is the name of a newspaper in a browser game called Fallen London.


End file.
